Value for money | 29 November 2012

It’s been challenged as ‘elitist’ and at times in its more than 60-year history it’s been threatened with deletion from the schedule. But CD Review, with its specialist ‘Building a Library’ slot, has been around since I was old enough to listen. Radio 3’s keynote Saturday-morning show is probably the programme I miss most when I’m away. You know exactly what the format is going to be, recognise most of the voices behind the mikes, yet you’re never quite sure what you might hear, what you could discover.

Its survival, in a format virtually unchanged as far back as I can remember, always strikes me as extraordinary in this age of constant makeovers. It alone is probably worth the licence fee, if you think how much a year’s worth of private tutorials on classical music would cost (try to find a class, let alone a tutorial, for less than £48.50 a term).