Is there anything more annoying to switch on the radio for a favourite show and find it isn’t there?
We radio listeners have firm habits – and essential illusions. Mine is that a particular presenter or programme is talking, personally, to me. And, perhaps, to you. We all like to feel that our best-loved shows somehow understand us. So when, all of a sudden and without much of an explanation, the time of a favourite show changes we are, at first, bewildered. Shortly after, however, we may get angry. Listener reaction to current changes on BBC radio indicates we are currently very angry indeed.
It’s not just the odd show here and there that’s been changed in its time and place on the airwaves. The schedules of Radios 2, 3 and 4, not to mention 4 Extra, have all had radical surgery. Radio 3’s Composer of the Week has been switched from 9am to 4pm. The Archers omnibus on Radio 4 is still on Sunday but now goes out at 11am, an hour later than it has for decades.
The theory is probably that (a) we’ll get used to it all and change our listening patterns accordingly. Or (b) that we will switch to Sounds, the online service that BBC radio never stops promoting and seems to be the infinite boxroom for audio storage. To me: this is not good business.
Some programmes have changed station altogether. Radio 2 institution Friday Night Is Music Night is now on Radio 3. The time is the same, 7.30pm. But the programme just doesn’t fit its new place. Presenters like Petroc Trelawny do their best to make the show and its loyal audience feel at home.
But it isn’t: it sticks out like a sore thumb. If you heard the James Bond special last Friday you’ll know what I mean. To be fair, it really wouldn’t have fitted Radio 2 very well either, all pounding drums and screaming vocals. But on Radio 3 it sounded hideous – I kept thinking whether the ghost of John Drummond, an erstwhile Radio 3 Controller who never made his objections a secret, would do a special haunting of Broadcasting House to mark this mad event.
I’ve been to a few Friday Night Is Music Night shows that really show the BBC at its entertaining and educative best. It travels the country (and beyond – this Friday’s comes from China). The audiences tend to have lots of elderly people but also almost as many school children who have never seen or heard a full orchestra perform. Its house band is the BBC Concert Orchestra, whose own future may now also hang in the balance.
There are some promising new Radio 3 programmes, however. I give Earlier…with Jools Holland (12 noon on Saturdays) a cheery welcome, even though a person really has to like boogie piano very much indeed to love this show. At least Jools doesn’t sound as if he’s reading a script. Music Matters, which follows, is fronted by the highly readable arts editor of The Times Richard Morrison. Oh dear. I hope he learns quickly that being readable in print is not the same as making a script sound like a conversation. Maybe they’ll give him a producer who can help.
This time next year we will actually know whether all this show shifting has pushed up the audience for Radio 2 (still the biggest of the BBC’s networks), introduced new listeners to Radio 3 and brought The Archers a whole new fan base. If you’re a fan of the BBC Concert Orchestra, however, keep your fingers firmly crossed.