This may be rather long piece from The Times (3 FEB) but it is a fascinating
Credo from the new BBC R3 Controller and signals a major change of direction
for the station.  This treasure will, it seems, be saved for the nation!

   Roger Wright, Radio 3's new Controller, tells Richard Morrison that he
   wants his network to open a window on to the wider arts and music world

   < Live and lively at the new Radio 3 >

   Roger Wright doesn't look like a man prone to bouts of gloom.  But if he
   does succumb he might take comfort from the words of his predecessor,
   Nicholas Kenyon:  "Always remember, the great thing about being
   Controller of Radio 3 is that you can't win."

   That's true.  Depending on which epistle he plucks from his postbag,
   Wright will be told that his network is too elitist or too populist,
   too chatty or too stuffy, indigestibly high-brow or slithering dumbly
   into the gutter.

   As for his BBC bosses, they may nod benignly now when he tells them
   that Radio 3 is all about quality, quality and quality, and not about
   such trivial matters as a ratings war with Classic FM.  But a year down
   the line, when the audience gap between Radio 3 and its soaraway
   commercial competitor may have grown from an irritant into an
   embarrassment, will they still be supportive?

   I hope so, because Mr Wright is probably as close to being Mr Right for
   this impossible job as they will ever find.  His musical credentials are
   impeccable - he is the first Radio 3 Controller ever to possess a music
   degree - and as a former BBC producer he knows the Corporation's funny
   little ways well enough.

   But he has also spent time in the much tougher music business outside,
   working with the Cleveland Orchestra in America and then with Deutsche
   Grammophon.  So when he returned to the BBC as head of classical music,
   and engaged the hard men of the Musicians Union in an epic negotiation
   to drag the working practices of BBC orchestras into the late 20th
   century, he had a secret weapon:  he knew where all the small print
   was buried.

   The result was an agreement that actually made it economically feasible
   for BBC TV producers to use the BBC's own orchestras.  Revolutionary!
   "If the BBC had to jump through contractual hoops in order to put a
   camera in front of its own Symphony Orchestra, or if the natural history
   unit found it cheaper to go to Munich or Prague to record a soundtrack
   than to book the BBC Concert Orchestra, then clearly something was not
   quite right," says Wright, with wry understatement.

   Indeed.  Particularly as the Concert Orchestra, left with free time
   on its hands, could then use its subsidised advantages to outbid the
   independent London orchestras for commercial engagements - and, in
   Wright's words, "destabilise the external market".

   Wright's deal not only convinced the BBC's governors to continue picking
   up the hefty tab for five house orchestras and a full-time professional
   chorus.  It also probably tipped the scales in his favour when Radio 3's
   top job fell vacant last summer.  Wright's main challenge came from an
   unashamed populist, the Decca record executive Roger Lewis, and the
   choice between them seemed to epitomise an ideological tussle within the
   BBC between quality and ratings, public-broadcasting obligations and
   global ambitions.  Was that how Wright saw it?

   "All I can say is that I stated a view about the sort of network I
   would feel comfortable running, and that I have not had to compromise
   on any of the things I said then.  The fact that I got the job means,
   I suppose, that these were the things that the BBC top management
   wanted for Radio 3 too."

   Bizarrely, this turned out to be only the first skirmish in the "Battle
   of the Rogers".  For on the very day that Wright's appointment was
   announced, Lewis accepted the job of running Classic FM.  So is it
   hand-to-hand combat now? Not according to Wright.  Following the usual
   Radio 3 line, he won't admit that the two stations are even on the same
   battlefield.

   His network is "not in the business of competing with Classic FM", he
   claims.  "And I am certainly not looking over my shoulder and asking
   myself:  'If we were more like them, would we get their audience?' The
   first priority is to get our own music policy right, and the right
   balance of speech and music that will draw listeners into a world of
   ideas in an entertaining way.  Once we have done that we can think about
   getting it to as many people as possible.  If we do it the other way
   round we are on a downward spiral."

   Yesterday he offered a glimpse of what those fine words mean in
   practice, unveiling a new look to the morning schedule that dumps such
   unlamented slots as Artist of the Week and Sound Stories to make space
   for a daily 90-minute transmission of live or specially recorded
   performance at 11.30am.  "Yes, people might cough, there might be split
   notes, or the programme might overrun," he says.  "But the message we
   have to get across is that live broadcasts are so much more interesting
   than simply playing CDs."

   If Wright has a big idea for Radio 3, this is it.  He perceives that
   for much of the time Classic FM does little except play CDs, and he
   wants Radio 3 to differentiate itself by relaying the most exciting
   events from the wider arts world.  He promises far more broadcasts
   from Edinburgh, Cheltenham and the big European festivals this summer,
   and more BBC mini-festivals ("we must utilise the musical resources
   that only we have"), in addition to the immensely popular Proms.

   Nor will the outside links only be musical.  Wright is "doing deals
   with places like the Almeida" to bring the most talked-about London
   theatre productions to Radio 3.

   "I really want to get the message across about drama," he says.
   "When I tell people that I run the network that broadcasts Hare's
   Via Dolorosa, Harriet Walter in Hedda Gabler, Peter Hall's Major
   Barbara, Shakespeare plays and the Troy trilogy, they usually say:
   'Goodness, when is that festival coming on?' I reply:  'That was the
   past six weeks on Radio 3'.  It's not so much the fact that people
   aren't listening that worries me; it's the realisation that they
   don't even know it's there."

   He has already saved the useful magazine programme Music Matters from
   the chop.  Elsewhere, he promises less banter and more music on the
   breakfast programme On Air, and yet another tinkering with the Saturday
   morning CD Review, revamped to general dismay last year.

   "Hardly a day goes by when my postbag does not remind me of these
   issues," he says.  Ah, the famous postbag!  Its contradictory,
   bad-tempered contents may come to infuriate Wright, but they should
   thrill him as well.  Radio 3's listeners may not be legion, but they
   care passionately about their station - and they will defend to their
   last breath the old-fashioned notion of a music network that repays
   serious listening.  Good for them.  In Wright they may have a kindred
   spirit and a doughty champion.

John G. Deacon
Home page:         http://www.ctv.es/USERS/j.deacon