Just in: Classic FM and BBC Radio 3 suffer massive audience losses
NewsResults are in from RAJAR for the third quarter of 2022 and they make miserable reading for the UK’s two leading classical radio stations.
BBC Radio 3 has lost one in six of its listeners, down 16% from 2 million to 1.71m listeners. This is a particular disaster since Q3 usually brings an uptick from the summer Proms. This year’s Proms were the weakest in recent memory. The stations’s boss announced last month that he is leaving.
Things are even worse at Classic FM, which has posted falls for four of the last five quarters and is now down to 4.66 million, its lowest in two decades.
Here’s some analysis from media entrepreneur Davd Taylor.
And more from Radio Today.
Something’s got to change. There’s not point in being user-friendly if the users go elsewhere.
Do we really need to panic? Maybe decline in music education is also to be blamed, but the on-demand way of watching films and listening to music is taking audiences from TV and radio stations everywhere. For example who watches TV these days apart from the news? The huge problem is elsewhere – that the model for monetising this for the content makers is not catching up with this phenomenon. The pandemic should have taught us a lesson that there is so much stuff on the internet for which the artists get no or little money. We really need to choose one of two ways. Either we have culture fully subsidised from public money (so reversing the trend that for example British orchestras were forced to follow for the last 30 years) or we clamp down on free access to music and films on the internet or at least do something about big streaming services ripping artists off.
London may be okay, but opera audiences and a lot else in the north has declined since the pandemic, and now the cost of living crisis. The north is far colder than London.
Radio is dead. In the same way that traditional TV is dying. Just the way it is. People can listen to whatever they want whenever they want now. Radio is completely superfluous from a music point of view.
You are writing complete rubbish.
Radio is surviving very well, and will always do so, thanks to the MOTOR CAR, and its attendant traffic jams.
Look at all of Europe.
Radio is not dead, and provides a vital support to alleviate the boredom of driving.
I like Radio because unlike a CD (remember those) or something streamed, I do not know what is coming next. Radio is less ‘wallpaper music’ than something you acquired yourself and chose to play. That lack of predictability means occasionally, after ‘The Lark Ascending’ has gone up into the sky, I might be given something that makes me want to stop and listen. Radio works for me, even though I time shift most of my TV content.
It helps if presenters are experienced and competent. The BBC’s choice of Elizabeth Alker to front weekend breakfast shows why gender, class, accent and background matter more than anything else. I stopped listening when she announced that a piece had been conducted by a certain Charles Monk. She didn’t have a clue that a famous Alsatian had once been Furtwängler’s concertmaster in Leipzig before he went to Boston. Even if she took regular lessons from Martin Handley, it would take years before she attained similar levels of competence. And do we really need all these gushing males and females, most irritably at the Proms, telling us that a particular performance was utterly magical, spellbinding, transformational, and that the performers themselves were amazing, fantastic, world-beating. Do listeners not have ears of their own? Can they not make up their own minds? A kind of infantilism has taken over the BBC.
It’s not Elizabeth Alker’s accent which is the problem, it’s her borderline speech defect. Why would you hire someone who sounds like they’re about to lisp as a radio presenter, especially one so woefully ignorant. Well, she is a good-looking woman so I suppose that’s the reason.
It would seem to be a minimum requirement, wouldn’t it!!!?
You ask why she was hired. The answer is diversity. Why should someone with a speech impediment who cannot properly pronounce the names of composers or performers not have an equal chance to broadcast on Radio 3?
For the same reason that someone who can only hobble shouldn’t have an equal chance to be picked to represent the country in the Olympics.
It’s more to do with competence not equality.
But that’s because the Olympics is elitist – and it’s always the fastest, highest and strongest who win everything. Why shouldn;t hobblers get gold too? I think that all entrants should have handicaps, like golf. Trained athletes should have weights strapped to their legs to even things out. Only then will the Olympics be truly diverse.
Since the Olympic Games represent all nations that means AUTHENTIC diversity and not the socially engineered, faux (er) variety.
Bring back Patricia Hughes
Mary Malcolm Sylvia Peters Joan Bakewell etc
Moira Stuart
I’m sure the BBC would describe basic competence as ‘ableist’. And being good-looking shouldn’t I’d suggest, matter on radio….
No, but there are many people who appear on TV who have good faces for radio!!
The lisp is maddening–so maddening, in fact, that I have to turn off the volume whenever she starts to speak into the microphone. I don’t understand how she keeps her job.
Yes, if you’re musically educated, but not of you are part of the majority being encouraged to try classical music and not felt stupid by the so-called elite!
Being musically educated makes you suspect. Talking Albert Square English is the desired criterion. Introducing Mahler’s 8th in a cockney accent makes it more likely that people will listen to it.
Not blinking likely
Common speech means I switch off whereas could listen to Petroc Trelawny or Jacob rees mogg all day long
I agree with your comments. I can’t stand alker but more because her voice and manner have convinced me that she is presenting to nerdy children rather than a more general audience.
Yes, but nerdy children are among the target audience for R3 as grown-ups are leaving in droves and R3 is desperately trying to drive up its audience figures, otherwise the BBC might axe it.
Never mind – Chi-Chi OBE is on the list of candidates for the Controller’s job and she might fix R3; if she gets it she might end up as Lady Chi-Chi and sit in the upper chamber of the country she hates so much.
I absolutely loathe that woman who comperes the BBC Proms talking about John Wilson as a ‘rock-star’. He’s an educated, dedicated and serious musician and musicologist. The exact opposite of a ‘rock star’, madam!!
Petroc Trelawney Radio 3 the
best speaking on at present generally and dosent talk down to one or lower the quality bar
Classical music is so very special and only appreciated by a special sort of person so general media hype and statistics should not bother us
Someone like Jacob Rees Mogg presenting his musical favourites would be excellent
Radio 3 these days reeks of bourgeois progressives signalling their ‘right on’ virtues by programming music that puts their identity politics before merit. These are people blinded by the delusion that they can engineer egalitarianism and manipulate interest – a unique form of stupidity that has afflicted otherwise intelligent people.
All you need is common sense to see that where merit is concerned people ultimately vote with their feet and that’s exactly what has happened.
It’s a perfect storm of technical (online-internet, streaming), social-cultural (hip-hop coolness, changing tastes) and political (“woke”) trends. But at least the UK’s (and world’s) economy is booming right now. Good times!
Agree, but draw the line at “otherwise intelligent”. Ah, no.
And it’s not as if there aren’t plenty of rivals/alternatives to radio3.
Just for context, radio lister numbers are down for most stations – 5 Live is down 20%. So it’s not necessarily a classical music problem.
Perhaps Radio 3 (and Classic FM) should change, and decide what would be high quality provision in their own terms rather than following some marketing consultant’s idea of what potential listeners might be wanting.
I am old enough to remember when Radio 3 (and its Third Programme predecessor) was essential listening for those with a serious interest in music, just because of its intelligence and quality. It set the agenda rather than tried to follow an imaginary one.
It’s still setting the agenda. It just happens to be an agenda you disagree with
…or maybe someone might open a new UK classical music station like so many around the world – sponsored by musical colleges and perhaps classical record companies. My personal favourite is WQXR New York – somewhere between R3 as it was and Classic FM, but without the latter’s lubricious self-advertising.
Also, the previous posting about radio being sustained by the motor car is, I fear, flawed. Most modern motor cars have USB slots in their radios enabling drivers to create their own playlists from YouTube and play them while they drive. My car is a little older and has a CD player in it – which I use much more frequently than I listen to the radio stations.
I remember when Essential Classics was hosted by Rob Cowan and Sarah Walker. At that time, as far as I remember, it topped the Radio 3 audience figures. Look at it now! Seems to me like killing the goose that laid the golden egg…
Most of the time these days I listen to music via U-Tube following along with the score. Or my own CD collection.
Is that different to YouTube?
I’m a lifelong devotee of Radio 3 but increasingly reach for the off button as they insist on including jazz (it has its place and it’s own spot already), folk music, film music, pop music. Go over to Radio 2, or 1, and play them a piece of Joaquin, Palestrina, Benjamin Britten, Beethoven etc, and see how that would go down. ☹️
Totally agree with you and the other commentators. I listen a lot to radio 3 and want classical music, not interested in jazz. We should be running the station.
My least favourite presenters are K Molleson, K Derham and Daniele something or other, can’t understand a word of what they are saying and these are radio presenters. The BBC has lost its way, gave up on tv years ago.
All women, I note
They made absolutely superb television drama in times past. The Americans just couldn’t compete back in the 70s, 80s, 90s in particular. They simply didn’t have that ear for dialogue, generally speaking.
Today we look back, via U-Tube, at some stunning British dramas and sitcoms (Ok, not all BBC but also Thames etc.) and just relish the writing and quality. (More recently, “Cracker”, after Robbie’s death.)
A highlight of BBC TV: “A Very Peculiar Practice”. Americans; look and learn.
Some jazz can hold up its head anywhere for quality, innovation, musicianship – in particular those 30s and 40s greats (I would suggest) from the likes of Armstrong, Holiday, Bechet.
If we were to run Radio 3 indeed, I would say let’s give listeners old and new a chance to discover them, just as we hope that the resolute jazz or pop-lover will come to a broader view. As Armstrong said: There’s only two kinds of music, Good music and Bad music.
The evening mix tape can be quite a feast – and Shazam lets us follow up immediately what takes our fancy.
However, I agree about the presentation! Ever-increasing babble, a sense of ingratiation, often a treading on the heels of a piece as it ends – a trait of the ever-clumsy Classic FM.
I’ve been digging out cassettes I recorded from R3 in the early1980s. Such riches – choral, symphonic, a taster of avant garde and the wonderful other-world of Indian classical.
Presenters pop up on the tapes, too, and I am missing Tom Crowe with his poetry breaks, Patricia Hughes for her warm and knowledgeable introductions. They talked enough, never too much!
Good point
I stopped listening to ClassicFM around 2015 simply because of the amount of rubbish they played. It has been very noticeable over the last year or so that Breakfast on 3 includes increasing amounts of film and television music (I think the real nadir may have been the theme to Murder She Wrote the day after Angela Lansbury died). Essential Classics has never been the same since Ian Skelly was unceremoniously dumped to the Afternoon slot. I’m not calling for it to become unbearably elitist but Radio 3 needs to return to playing actual classical music, not dumbing down, and find better producers. A new controller should have this on top of their “to do” list.
Years ago, when the R3 dumbing down started, I decided that it would have achieved its final goal when ‘I’m a Pink Toothbrush’ or ‘The Laughing Policeman’ would be elevated to Essential Classics alongside the likes of Beethoven’s 9th, Schubert’s String Quintet and Wagner’s Ring. Little did I realise that it was possible to circumvent this nadir and plunge into unforeseen depths of ruination.
There are now, it seems, two forces at work here. Dumbing down was only the first, whereby complete works yielded to ‘snippets’ culled from them – single movements rather than complete pieces – or short pieces lasting less than ten minutes or so. R3 decided that their audience could no longer take the weight of the whole Jupiter Symphony, Emperor Concerto or Enigma Variations.
The second, and more pernicious’ process is the egalitarian ‘levelling down’. Each programme, every day, had to feature women composers, non-white composers, young composers, non-European composers and anything that would balance the white European content. Diversity is now more important than quality; boxes have to be ticked, quotas met and policies implemented.
There are at present a few programmes that have hardly been subjected to either of these processes – principally the afternoon and evening concerts – but audiences are still leaving in droves and there must be a reason other than the drift away from radio to internet. (Incidentally, I wonder whether these audience figures include the listeners who stream R3 from the web.)
The BBC remains steadfastly oblivious to the message that comes through clearly from the quality press, SD and their loss of audience. Am I just a conspiracy theorist in thinking that they are deliberately driving away the audience until they can use the lack of it to justify axing it to save money? Or are they so arrogant that they won’t listen to any criticism from their audience because they are always right. Or both of the above?
Herbie, “Or are they so arrogant that they won’t listen to any criticism from their audience because they are always right”.
Yes, this I’m afraid.
You will notice that progressives always have cast iron knowledge that underneath all the tolerance they spout, they actually have the only opinion that really counts – because it’s good for you.
My favorite classical station is WFMT (Chicago, United States). I stream it because I don’t live there but I hope it does not suffer a decrease is listeners.
I live in London but was born & raised in Chicago, WFMT has always been a favourite
Maybe they need to play more stuff by Margaret Price and Ethel Smyth…?
Did you mean Florence Price? Margaret was a fine singer. I don’t think Ethel Smyth can be bracketed with Florence though. Her overture to ‘The Wreckers’ is truly exciting and well orchestrated. Her orchestral Serenade is delightful – a true companion to Brahms’ two works in that genre – particularly the first.
Florence’s music is, I find, anodyne; pleasant enough but rarely, if ever, rising to distinction either in inventiveness or in orchestration.
Absolutely agree about FP. The bandwagon-jumping, box-ticking, virtue-signalling hype around her is utterly embarrassing. Protected characterististics innit? The bubble WILL burst
I attended “The Wreckers” prom during the summer and was absolutely bowled over by it. Started off as Peter Grimes and ended as Aida.
I’m assuming John’s comment was meant to be tongue in cheek in which case it has been much misunderstood!
I used to live in the Chicago area for a couple of years, and I completely agree with you – WFMT is one of the best classical stations I have ever listened to!
In terms of Classic FM, they employ ex-BBC journos who seem to have no real knowledge.
As a long-term listener to Radio Three, they have been ‘dumbing down’ for sometime, especially during the weekend. Saturday breakfast is virtually unlistenable to me, with the female presenter clearly unsure whether she’s still on BBC Radio 6, or whatever Godawful ‘yoof’ channel she’s normally on.
I find myself switching to Classic FM quite often, yes the music is banal and the adverts nauseating (I just hit the mute button), but I do find some of the presenters quite knowledgeable, although admittedly they are usually ex-Radio 3.
I’m not surprised when R3 continues to dumb down and repeat every day their tedious routines
If some listeners to local classical station’s have gone away, where have they gone? This particular listener has not bothered with R3 or Classic fm for years. Through my stereo hi-fifi system(Cambridge Audio Streamer) and 2 Roberts Radios I have access to dozens of Classic Internet stations across Europe and the USA. There’s even one in Australia that I’m especially fond of.
This is very sad. We listen to many programmes on Radio 3…and many more on our favourite, Classic FM, the latter filled with lots of calming, relaxing music.
However, Mr. BBC, please note that Radio 2, in many cases, is resembling more like the irritating and manic Radio 1. Our ears occasionally need a REST!!!
CLASSIC FM is ESSENTIAL!!! WVEN THERAPUTIC!!!
I love R3. It is the only channel I listen to. It must be unique throughout the world for its provision of quality music and comment.
That said, it has unfortunately taken on board the general policies of the BBC to take on presenters with heavy regional accents and/or awful diction. I am constantly yelling at the radio in a futile effort to correct the frequent mis-pronuncuations. The previous role of the BBC to educate and raise standards has been abandoned in favour of imitating the general verbal slush that now surrounds us.
The other aspect that jars is the heavy wokery. Go woke, go broke as they say! You get told 20x a day that it is going to be International whatever day soon or what is being done to celebrate Black History month. One feels these things are constantly rammed in one’s face and represent some kind of propaganda.
Maybe because radio 3 they play music from Africa and India which is just sh!t
Not sure if it IS sh&t, but you certainly aren’t allowed to even suggest that it might be. All world music, it seems is beyond criticism, but its very nature.
For me – as a lifetime attendee and supporter of the BBC Proms – the format has changed considerably to “tick boxes” of inclusivity- and in a an attempt to appeal to wider audiences – and I resent that, and suspect that is the reason why I have not attended this season. The BBC has lost its way !
These figures are not significant enough to mark the demise of Classic FM or Radio 3. After all- don’t most of us drive these days? And what do we have on in the car? Um- now let me think. What gets my goat about Radio 3 now is the dumbing down- particularly the current trend for interviewing hip hop artists & other ignorami about their favourite ‘Classical’ music. Most of them haven’t even heard Beethoven 5. Time for musically educated people such as myself (& hundreds of others equally qualified to actually say something intelligent as opposed to moronic) to be given a bit of air time to raise the standards.
This is my first comment as I find myself in agreement with all of your comments! I also have given up on Radio 3 and Classic FM the final straw with the latter was when the 9 until 12 morning show became a caricature of a game show with the host Alexander Armstrong!! Some of Classic ‘s presenters are good for example Catherine Bott and John Brunning, however the station does seem to be a retirement place for BBC people
It wouldn’t be so bad if we weren’t compelled to pay a huge licence fee for having a TV – to support the BBC , that we hardly ever watch – and to support radio stations that we never listen to.
That person in the picture is what turns me off Classic FM when he’s on.
I like to listen to BBC radio 3, but I’m really put off by the amount of talking. It’s rare to hear symphonies or concertos played these days they are resorting often to “lollipops” and incessant bla bla bla. Jazz music is also played more often as well.
Yes, blame those tech savvy folk watching BBC Proms recordings on YouTube and BBC iPlayer instead of traipsing down to the Albert Hall (which is no longer as friendly or efficient as it was pre-Covid; some of the door and security staff seem resentful that people actually want to watch a show) or listening on Radio 3.
I know numerous people who tuned in to hear Radio 3 for the first time (and told me what they heard) because they wanted to catch the Ukrainian Freedom Orchestra live on radio. Not sure what these figures are actually recording. R3 and Classic FM still have lots of fans.
In a fairly small nation, those are not such bad numbers.
Many opinionated commenters here apparently have no idea how R3 works. The presenters do not generally choose their own playlists. The producers do that. The presenters are just the cannon fodder.
This is exactly what I mentioned. It is unfair to blame presenters for the shortcomings of producers
I listen to Classic FM, not just for pleasure, but to learn about music, various aspects of which I’m studying. I’m often in a hurry, and/or driving, and it is very annoying when the presenters make listeners wait through a raft of irritating adverts and jingles, PLUS the next piece of music, before they tell you what you’ve just heard. Why????
Jess Gillam is a great presenter, very knowledgeable and engaging. This classical life is my favourite programme. Therefore it proves that regional accents are an irrelevance.
The main reason is the pompous public school girl persona outlook etc that Radio 3 has clothed itself in which entails all male staff being required to obtain written permission to peel an orange on the premises or say anything about one of the great classical recordings or performers of the past who did NOT perform in a trendy authentic style or on period instruments without a note of apology in the voice. When you dismiss the past so easily in favour of what is fashionable you yourself will be dismissed. I stopped listening years ago.
I am not absolving BBC Radio 3 entirely because its composition and maje up is largely responsible for the present dire situation of low and trivial quality. Contributory factors are the market led approach which has seeped into all aspects of public service since the 1980s where programme making has been “farmed” out to private companies without two pennysworth of ethos or public service let alone cultural depth to rub together. Another factor is budgets. Technical development isn’t necessarily cheap and the BBC far from embracing new technology to maintain or even increase the number of live concert broadcasts has actually reduced this important element of its output. As FM broadcasting of live music is the highest form of audio fidelity anybody who has invested in first class equipment over the years has been robbed. The annoying and regular resurrection of trophes such as the weekly playing of and praise for the “great” Benjamin Britten ad nausem, the elevation of largely forgotten women composers of little distinction to essential classics status, the built in bias towards period instrument performance and categorising some of our greatest recordings ever made as well as some of the greatest musicians to marginal status often with a sarcastic comment, the praising to the roof of inferior Lieder singing in particular baritones who would fit better in a Howard Keel musical in the West End rather than a concert platform, the long runnng nationalistic envy and fear of the German musical tradition which was part of the BBC’s DNA from the beginning…. all of these and more seem to have become more delineated in recent years as the general body of what Radio 3 does well (like bones poking out of a carcass) and consequently more annoying. I read somewhere else, in a trade magazine, a while back, that consumer based programmes, such as the dreadful Saturday morning Building A Library with the equally dreadful Andrew and his generally pig ignorant “invited guests” were perhaps the “way forward”. Oh goody! There goes the “market” again and hamster wheel economics. We all know the Oscar Wilde saying about value..
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I would suggest that the decline of Classic fm is due to poor and insensitive management of advertising. Loud shouty ads for Butlins or Vodaphone really intrude on any calm mood created by the music. Maybe have sponsored programming with regular sensitively created sponsor mentions would be possible?