Does Radio 3 need a new controller?

Where next for Radio 3? Last Friday was the First Night of this year’s Proms season but it was the last night at the Proms for Roger Wright, who for 15 years has masterminded the station and for seven of those 15 the summer concert programme as well. Rather surprisingly, and you might think ominously, no successor has so far been named to steer this most elegant yet vulnerable station into the digital challenges of 2015 and beyond. Could this be anything to do with the fact that earlier in the year a new post — Head of BBC Music — was created? Will Wright’s tenure be the last time the station has a dedicated Controller, looking exclusively after the BBC’s classical music (and jazz) output?

Wright himself has often been accused (not least in this magazine) of weakening the station’s classical music backbone and of pandering to the current taste for excessive chatter and constant interactive communication. But how do you keep on attracting new listeners to such a ‘highbrow’ station (ever more essential as the current audience ages)? What concessions need to be made to ensure the station stays in tune with listeners, both existing and potential, who now behave very differently from how they would have done even ten years ago? Digital and the web are here to stay and not to make use of what they offer would be like sticking to candelight or refusing to take the train. What matters is that the station stays ‘alive’, connected, in tune. If that means becoming more user-friendly, we are going to have to live with it — as long as not too much is sacrificed along the way.