The new controller of Radio 3 has at last been appointed. Alan Davey (not to be confused with the former bassist from Hawkwind) comes to the BBC from the Arts Council and a career in the Civil Service. This will be his first job in broadcasting, and will be no small challenge. These are tough times for Radio 3, squeezed between the commercial charms of Classic FM and the trendy allure of BBC’s 6 Music, and, worryingly, in the last quarter its audience numbers went below 1.9 million for the first time since 2010.
The BBC’s home of classical music and ‘culture’ is often criticised for being too off-putting, too elitist, not in tune with the current mood. Critics like to ask why, with just under two million listeners, the station should continue to be funded by UK taxpayers, most of whom will never tune in to hear Matthew Sweet or Philip Dodd on Free Thinking or to Opera on 3 live from the Met in New York.
At the other extreme, some formerly loyal listeners (including, I suspect, more than a few readers of this magazine) have been complaining that Radio 3 has gone too far down the populist road, breaking up its morning sequence with chit-chat and gimmicks such as the classical top ten and nerd-ish interactive quizzes, which ask listeners to phone in with their answers to questions such as identifying a piece of music after hearing it being played backwards on the rewind button.
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