BBC Radio 3 trials an easy-listening channel
NewsLorna Clarke, BBC Director of Music, yesterday launched ‘digital extensions’ for radio music channels.
These are the official expectations of Radio 3-plus:
– The Radio 3 extension will play peaceful favourites to ethereal choral music, and soothing orchestral textures to minimal and neoclassical sounds, including newly-released pieces and performances of classic works as well as new compositions. The station will champion music by living composers including the new generation of artist-composers who receive a limited amount of airplay on other UK stations. Live and specially-recorded music will feature across the week.
– It will reflect mood-based repertoire from the BBC Orchestras and Choirs across the UK, the BBC’s New Generation Artists and BBC Introducing acts. The station will also support the BBC Proms through curated music mixes that feature Proms performances, bringing these unique musical moments to a wider UK audience.
– The schedule will feature popular on-demand titles such as the Mindful Mix, and artist-led shows like Ultimate Calm, as well as new commissions. It will also include simulcast content from Radio 3 such as Night Tracks, and music specifically selected to aid focus.
– The extension will include shows that lean into the mindfulness, wellbeing and sleep space with unique and compelling combinations of speech and music as heard in BBC Sounds titles like The Music & Meditation Podcast, Tearjerker and The Sleeping Forecast (a combination of Radio 4’s Shipping Forecast and classical music from BBC Introducing artists).
– Drawing from a library of around 8,000 tracks, it will combine more music from a broader range of classical and contemporary composers than other UK stations to create a consistent, calming listening experience unlike anything in the market.
A good idea. But the key point is to avoid all that talking which mars the experience on the main channel (albeit I realise that that works for other people)
I’d like a channel that doesn’t have the talking and doesn’t pander to the “relaxing” mindset – an oxymoron there of course.
Great, if it means that stuff is kept away from the normal Radio 3 programmes
Does anyone else find this whole phenomenon rather creepy? A sort of mass sterilisation to remove a part of the brain? Unfortunately, the word “muzak” is trademarked: “A brand name for a type of music that is played quietly and continuously in public places, such as airports, hotels, and shops, to make people feel relaxed.” [online Cambridge Dictionary]
I think I meant mass anaesthetic.
Either works!
No.
Consistently Mood-based! Calming Mindfulness! Sleep-Spaced Uniqueness! Peacefully Diverse! Ethereal Outreach!
I feel your pain Mr Boxwell. What on earth are they playing at? Take a great station, albeit with a few issues, and try and morph it into Classic fm? We’ve already had the in-house ads doing the same type of infuriating voiceover style as Class fm’s ‘Relaxing Bloody Classics at All Hours of the Sodding Day and Night’ or whatever they call it there.
BBC R3, for all its faults doesn’t need this, neither does its faithful audience. What next? This stuff replacing the evening concerts as the other lot did? It will only be a matter of time before this gets onto the main channel in increasing quantity.
A lot of nonsense has been spouted by BBC haters recently. Don’t give them any ammunition please.
Following Classic FM’s audience. “Relax with Classic FM”. Only thirty years later
One might prefer it would be 30 centuries after.
Almost a year on from the now notorious BBC classical music redundancy strategy, and the executive ‘team’ responsible for that masterpiece have concocted that:
A nonsense word salad plan to soothe the listening public into believing that broadcast music is in safe hands at the BBC.
Heads up, folks:
These busy little band F execs are simply softening us all up for the real humdinger, dismantling the public service remit at Radio 3 whose cultural role will end up amounting to an atmosphere sound bank that only lift users and shopping malls will be exposed to.
Music is dying in deregulated commercially motivated Brexit Britain.
No amount of piped relaxing de-stress atmos will change that.
You tell ’em. It’s definitely something to do with Brexit.
This isn’t ‘easy listening’ in the true sense of the genre.
What happened to the quality arrangements and true easy listening of popular tuneful classical music mixed with music from the ballet, opera, operetta, musicals, films and TV?
Oh, that used to be the staple diet of BBC Radio 2, which has been changed now beyond recognition and in the process serious lighter music is no longer heard on the radio or TV for that matter sadly for those millions who used to tune in to enjoy and be entertained.
all the presenters – if there any – will no doubt use that awful slow therapy whisper that’s already mandatory for R3 night time music mixes. It won’t matter what they play, we’ll all be asleep. Bring back Late Junction and Mixing It.
It sounds appalling. But there seems to be an idea about that classical music is meant to be ‘soothing’, and lethargic quiet slow-moving pieces seem to enjoy a strange popularity – like the first movement of the Moonlight sonata if played at half-speed. However, it is an extra channel, so nobody has to tune in.
What is that strange strange sound?
Oh yes, it’s the sound of Slippedisc commenters losing their minds over something they don’t have to listen to.
…it does have wider implications for the future of Radio 3 music policy, though. Can we hope R3’s core programming will improve when the dross is farmed out to a new service? I think not.
‘Curated’. ‘Mindful’. All the typical BBC Newspeak. Says it all.
In the meantime, the BBC is cutting its local radio output and merging coverage and removing stations.
Given that there are so many genres in “Classical” music, and that Radio 1 has additional channels of R1 Dance, R1 Relax/Anthems, and R1Extra, R3 could have stations devoted to Medieval, Renaissance, Baroque, Romantic, Opera, or Choral, Chamber, 20th/21st, “non-western classical” etc, etc. An old boss of mine wouldn’t entertain listening to anything beyond the era of J S Bach.
Radio 3 is copying Classic FM again. They have a late night programme called Calm Classics which follows a programme called Relaxing Evenings. Wallpaper music. Radio 3 has already followed Classic FM in its daytime schedule which now largely plays snippets of complete works instead of a whole symphony or concerto. It’s a downhill route for classical music on the radio