'They're philistines!' - Why has BBC Radio 3 ruined their weekend show? | SpectatorTV
ฝัง
- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 3 มิ.ย. 2024
- BBC Radio 3 has recently revamped their schedule, leaving some listeners less than impressed. The Spectator's religion editor Damian Thompson and The Spectator’s Arts Editor Igor Toronyi-Lalic discuss why the new format is patronising, and what Damian heard on the station that made him ‘nearly throw up’.
// SUBSCRIBE TO THE SPECTATOR
Get 12 issues for £12, plus a free £20 John Lewis/Waitrose voucher
www.spectator.co.uk/tvoffer
// FREE PODCASTS FROM THE SPECTATOR
Hear more from The Spectator's journalists on their podcasts, covering everything from the politics of the UK, US and China, to religion, literature, lifestyle and more.
www.spectator.co.uk/podcasts/
// FOLLOW US
/ spectator
/ officialspectator
/ the-spectator
/ spectator1828
/ thespectatormagazine
Theme song written and performed by Jon Barker © 2020 Jonathan Stewart Barker
Publisher Jonathan Stewart Barker 100%, administered by prsformusic.com
Recording © 2020 Jonathan Stewart Barker 100%, administered by ppl.com
Some things shouldn’t be ‘accessible’. There are things in this world whose beauty and enjoyability comes from their depth and complexity. Classical music is one of those things. To make it ‘accessible’ in the way people often mean is to destroy it. And plenty of young people like complexity and depth and sophistication. They certainly don’t want to be talked down to, like ‘oh you wouldn’t like this music, it’s too difficult and complex, here’s something accessible’.
I agree with you.
Nonetheless- accessibility is critical in education . A school which lacks a decent music department/ or which doesn't have one is bound to be a huge drawback in terms of sparking people's interest.
Please make this pair a regular feature !
I am saddened and angry that the once brilliant BBC has destroyed itself. The focus used to be on entertainment, education and the production of top quality output.
I gave up watching televised programmes and listening to the radio, when I was constantly shouting at the tv and radio. The final straw came when I was wanted to throw a cup of tea at my television.
Listening to classical music can transport you to another world, now it is akin to listening to ideological, North Korean political preaching programmes. We NEED some escapism in our lives.
As I said above, it is very sad that a Channel that was originally created to meet the needs of the VIEWER/LISTENER, has completely lost its way. There has been a shift in focus. Programmes are created now on what the BBC STAFF want to hear/watch rather than what the VIEWER or LISTENER is interested in. Shame on them. 🏴🏴🇬🇧🇬🇧
It's more a cultural shift, the BBC has been a woke anti white anti western organisation for a long time now
Last time I heard BBC Radio Three they were boasting of how classical music and opera originated in Africa. A shame the BBC has to go away now. I byd it, as bide it farewell.
Talking of philistines, please note, the correct UK pronunciation of the BBC Radio 3 schedule is (shed-ule) & not the US version which sounds like (sked-ule).
The new schedule is a red herring. The problem is that they play so much rubbish in their other programmes. About a third of the music is played for political reasons.
Of course classical music is accessible to new audiences. But if you remove music teaching in schools and remove such music from, say, the Proms, you are a creature of the Age of Stupid. It has always been accessible. Has it not occurred to anyone that people secretly like feeling that they aappreciate something "high-brow", not pablum for the masses? And they LOATHE being patronised. There is such a treasury of arts and civilisation in Western culture, and this belongs to everyone, and has always been available and accessible. However you can lead a horse to water, but you cannot make him or her drink. Every discovery is a precious and personal thing.
Couldn’t agree more. Brilliant that I’m not the only one saying the same thing!
This is the most sensible comment here. I started listening to classical music after I started learning the piano and was intrduced to the classical repertoire. Radio 3 provided me with my education on classical music via the presenters' introduction before a piece was broadcast.
It sounds like there's a parallel here with the surface-level approach to diversity on TV. Where unrealistic racial diversity is shoehorned into British historical dramas. When they could instead be highlighting the deep and inspiring diversity of global history and folklore.
I see a lot of self-flagellation about classical music being too white. When we could just be positively showcasing all the exciting cross-pollination between classical music and other genres and cultures.
It's OKAY to be white
Even us long time Promers don't like what is going on with the BBC..
Why not stop paying for it?
I was listening to classical just yesterday. Like a fugue for piccolo and strings. Lively and coherent.
As someone that doesn't understand most classical music and much of the content of Radio 3 I have loved finding Radio 3 in recent years, as it's a rare place where listening habits can be challenged and sonic norms can broadened, I've found the new schedule sadly frustrating. Personally I'd like be challenged more not less, as like these guys say otherwise it's much like Classical FM and Radio 3 shouldn't be competing with that.
I agree with the sentiments exactly - though I'm very glad that there are no Boulez days on Radio 3 or any other radio station!
Can anyone guide me where to find archives of this particular program in discussion? Name of the program?
Building a Library was the name, I think
The inevitable influence of Classic FM, whose burbling has been going on for two decades.
A long time ago, the newly appointed head of diversity and inclusion insisted that EVERYTHING the BBC does must include this in its output; whatever has to be done to achieve it.
I'm happy to make the argument for classical music. It's better than other kinds of music as anyone knows who actually pays attention to it long enough to begin to understand it. It's better. This is not a personal evaluation. If you take advice from a body of experts their judgment will converge upon some obvious points. Bach, Mozart, Rameau, Mahler, Strauss, etc., etc., for a very long list. Classical music is better than commercial music made simply to help people recall the time they got someone else in a sexy hot clinch. In the better organised world, the one in my head, classical music is taught to all children and the bliss of the Albinoni oboe concerto is offered free to the kiddies of whatever class. Serious music is better, no apologies needed, and this was known once, through the consent of the learned, whereas democracy fools people into thinking their judgment is equal to anyone else's. No, not so. This is not my illusory view. It is my opinion but an opinion which represents a publicly available experience - called music. Take your misplaced relativism and apply it in its appropriate realm, but not in one in which judgment is formed by effort and discipline and imagination and an attempt to make the world a better place. I should probably have left the whole argument to Schubert's Fifth Symphony. It's obvious.
I still recall with a shudder the R3 presenter who introduced “the beautiful, the talented - the beautifully-talented Nicola Benedetti”.
The BBC should go comercial. END the TV licience fee.
Good idea..! Many leftist tv channels on the continent should be privatized.
Yes because commercial radio will protect culture and classical music…
@@salvyv
I understand your point if it was meant to be sarcastic.? But something has to be done about the leftist- woke bias in the cultural world, the press and msm.
The bbc and many many other western television and radio channels have allways been left-leaning, I personally don't mind it as long as they have common sense but when you feel, hear and see the underlying antisemtic and antiwestern current going through these sectors, it sends a chilling tinkle up the spine and reminds one of the days of the lying, hollow sovjet marxist propaganda. Especially when islamic terror organizations such as hamas and islamic jihad are being supported by stupid students who are in fact being hypocrite because they never utter 1 single word of criticism on the genocide that, for instance, is commited in subsaharan africa where islamic jihadists have allready murdered between 1,7 and 2,2 million non-muslim african since 1995-96. Children are decapitated but the leftist looney students prefer believing the exegerated death numbers and don't realize that hamas is consciously using civilians as shields and cannon fodder to manipulate public opinion..
That's where the western media comes in: they too spread the islamist propaganda, which is crazy and treacherous towards democracy because not only do these islamic terrorists want to exterminate all Jewish people in the world but all non-muslims as well in the long run..
I cant agree more with the opions stated in this podcast. I was an avid listener to weekend radio 3 until this change in scheduling. When i first heard that it was in the offing, i knew it would be a screw-up. Now
Now i only listen on sounds to the programmes and presenters i know i will enjoy. As for tom service - cant stand his voice or way of presenting.
The most visible examplar of this decline surely has to be the BBC Proms, particularly its televised concerts (almost always now crossover, big band or musical theatre stuff) with presenters waffling through rictus grins. Perhaps as far away as one can get from the concerts introduced by the likes of Dame Jane Glover, James Naughtie and Richard Baker. I suppose the argument for broadening appeal is that opera, ballet and orchestras get healthy subsidies from public pockets, ACE et al.
Thank you I can't wait for your radio station , and feel as if woken up from despair. The arrival of XXX from classic FM explains everything. Tom Service comes out well. Arretez le burbling, c'est pour les bébés.
Backing Igor here.
I agree with all you have to say. It is now so utterly boring and inain. Why if it’s good and loved and works. Why change it?
When you realize demographic cultural extinction is near.
Is is just me or is there some kind of crisis of prepositions taking place in the English language.
Until about 5 minutes ago I always thought it was "I am bored with" not "I am bored of". Now Cindy begins the item "Why is BBC R3 embarrassed of classical music?" Huh? I would always have assumed it's "embarrassed by". I have never in my life until this video heard anyone say "embarrassed of...". Is this a revival of Jane Austen's or Shakespeare's English? Is it something in the water?....?
@TJ_USA - I can pretty much guarantee that it's NOT a revival. More like a degeneration of the English language.
Yes, I agree. Prepositions are too difficult for people these days. As an aside however, I respectfully draw it to your attention that while demonstrating yourself to be strong on prepositions you are a trifle weak on spelling. Check out "Jane Austin" and "Shakespear"!
@@ZL54JK8 Yes, well my apologies to both writers.
Between basically dropping sacred choral music and evening prayer, doing woke plays, and focusing on Jazz and easy listening, R3 weekends have been on the downgrade for a long time.
The best way to listen to radio 3 now is to switch off the second the music stops
Damien looks like Andrew Doyle's older brother.
I find Tom Service both boring and patronizing with a strange dysfunctional diction.
The radio 3 snobs will love that alliteration in your sentence
Embaraased by classical music, not embarrassed “of” classical music. Wrong prepositions sound discordant.
Late Junction. Best thing on the radio. Reduced again. It'll be gone soon. Lost to the safe of lifeless mush.
Patronising, north London snobs
BBC Radio 4 is worse. Used to listen all the time now, never do.
BBC radio 3? I haven't listened to the wireless for 20 years
you can listen to it online
Damian keeps shouting over Igor, then takes over...
BBC might just be waking up to the fact that 'Boulez day' or 'Webern day' drove away what was left of the shrinking classical music audience. The snootiness of these two commentators demonstrates how and why Radio 3 has been disappearing up it's own fundament since the 1950s. I concur that the crossover into pop music at the Proms is nauseating, but so too is a diet of the avant garde mixed with ethnic twangle. The symphony orchestra is one of the triumphs of Western civilisation, and nothing to be ashamed of. Middle Brows also pay their licence fees.
This programme is awful.
The idea that 50 years ago people were dancing in the street to Barbara Thompson's Paraphernalia on Radio 3 is,how shall l put it, wishful thinking. The outcry when Soft Machine played the Proms included the phrases dumbing down and declining standards, probably the equivalent today of accusing someone of wokeness or inclusivity.In case you missed it we are nearly a quarter of the way into the 21st century. Just saying,that's all
Spectator is rubbish....I didn't even open the letter they sent begging me to resubscribe.
Then why are you watching their content?
@@FatNorthernBigothe is a clown. That is his work.
@@FatNorthernBigot
😂..👍, touché..!
I'm not....the algo sends it my way because I watched them once.....@@FatNorthernBigot
Their podcasts and online TV isn’t bad though. Moat articles are predictably counterintuitive.
Lots of lazy English and mid Atlantic slang recently along with general unprofessional-ness. But most shockingly is the lack of classical music. Now I understand why.