BBC Radio 3
BBC Radio 3 is a British national radio station owned and operated by the BBC. It replaced the BBC Third Programme in 1967 and broadcasts classical music and opera, with jazz, world music, drama, culture and the arts also featuring. The station has described itself as "the world's most significant commissioner of new music".
Through its New Generation Artists scheme, it promotes young musicians of all nationalities. The station broadcasts the BBC Proms concerts, live and in full, each summer in addition to performances by the BBC Orchestras and Singers. There are regular productions of both classic plays and newly commissioned drama.
Radio 3 won the Sony Radio Academy UK Station of the Year Gold Award for 2009 and was nominated again in 2011. According to RAJAR, the station broadcasts to a weekly audience of 1.9 million with a listening share of 1.6% as of July 2025.
History
Radio 3 is the successor station to the Third Programme which began broadcasting on 29 September 1946. The name Radio 3 was adopted on 30 September 1967 when the BBC launched its first pop music station, Radio 1 and rebranded its national radio channels as Radio 1, Radio 2, Radio 3, and Radio 4.Radio 3 was the overall label applied to the collection of services which had until then gone under the umbrella title of the Third Network, namely:
- the Third Programme proper
- the Music Programme
- sports coverage and adult educational programming in the early part of weekday evenings.
''Broadcasting in the Seventies''
On 10 July 1969 the BBC published its plans for radio and television in a policy document entitled Broadcasting in the Seventies. Later described in 2002 by Jenny Abramsky, Head of Radio and Music, as "the most controversial document ever produced by radio", the document outlined each station's target audience and what content should be broadcast on each channel. This concept went against the earlier methods laid out by the BBC's first Director General John Reith and caused controversy at the time, despite laying out the radio structure that is recognisable today.At the time of the review, Radio 3 faced several problems. An early option to cut costs, required under the proposals, was to reduce the number of networks from four to three, so that Radio 3 would not broadcast during the day and would use the frequencies of either Radio 1 or 2 as the two stations would merge content. However "Day-time serious music would be the casualty" of these proposals and caused some controversy. A further rumour was expressed that Radio 3 could be closed altogether as a strong statistical case existed against the station according to The Guardian. However, the Director-General, Charles Curran, publicly denied this as "quite contradictory to the aim of the BBC, which is to provide a comprehensive radio service". Curran had earlier dismissed any suggestion that Radio 3's small audience was a consideration: "What is decisive is whether there is a worthwhile audience, and I mean by worthwhile an audience which will get an enormous satisfaction out of it."
As a result of Broadcasting in the Seventies, factual content, including documentaries and current affairs, were moved to BBC Radio 4 and the separate titled strands were abolished. The document stated that Radio 3 was to have "a larger output of standard classical music" but with "some element in the evening of cultural speech programmes – poetry, plays". Equally, questions were being asked by the poet Peter Porter about whether other spoken content, for example poetry, would remain on the station. These concerns also led to the composer Peter Maxwell Davies and the music critic Edward Greenfield to fear that "people would lose the mix of cultural experiences which expanded intellectual horizons". However, Radio 3 controller Howard Newby reassured these concerns by replying that only the coverage of political and economic affairs would be passed to Radio 4, and Radio 3 would keep drama, poetry, and talks by scientists, philosophers and historians.
The Broadcasting in the Seventies report also proposed a large cutback in the number and size of the BBC's orchestras. In September 1969, a distinguished campaign group entitled the Campaign for Better Broadcasting was formed to protest, with the backing of Sir Adrian Boult, Jonathan Miller, Henry Moore and George Melly. The campaign objected to "the dismantling of the Third Programme by cutting down its spoken word content from fourteen hours a week to six" and "segregating programmes into classes". Mention of the campaign even reached debate in the House of Commons.
The "arts" controllers
From the launch until 1987, the controllers of Radio 3 showed preferences towards speech and arts programming as opposed to focus on classical music and the Proms. The first controller, Newby, made little contribution to the station, focusing on the transition from the Third programme to Radio 3 and as a result of the Broadcasting in the Seventies report.The second controller, Stephen Hearst who assumed the role in 1972, was different. As Hearst had previously been head of television arts features his appointment was seen with scepticism among the staff who viewed him as a populariser. According to Hearst when interviewed for Humphrey Carpenter's book, the main rival candidate for controller Martin Esslin, head of Radio Drama, had said to the interviewing panel that audience figures should play no part in the decision-making process over programming. Hearst said he responded to the same question about this issue by commenting that as the station was financed by public money it needed to consider the size of its audience – there was a minimum viable figure but this could be increased with "a lively style of broadcasting".
Hearst attempted to make the content of the channel more accessible to a wider audience, but his efforts, which included the evening drivetime programme Homeward Bound and Sunday phone-in request programme Your Concert Choice, were criticised. However, during this time the long running arts discussion programme Critics' Forum was launched as well as themed evenings and programmes of miscellaneous music including Sounds Interesting.
In 1978, Ian McIntyre took over as controller of Radio 3 but quickly faced uncomfortable relationships between departments. At approximately the same time Aubrey Singer became managing director of Radio and began to make programming on the station more populist in a drive to retain listeners in face of possible competition from competitors using a "streamed format". An example of this is the replacement of Homeward Bound in 1980 with an extended, presenter-driven programme called Mainly for Pleasure. The same year an internal paper recommended the disbandment of several of the BBC's orchestras and of the Music Division, resulting in low morale and industrial action by musicians that delayed the start of the Proms. Senior management was also getting dissatisfied with listening figures leading to the Director-General Alasdair Milne to suggest that presentation style was "too stodgy and old-fashioned".
The "music" controllers
In 1987 the positions of Controller of Music and Controller of Radio 3 were merged, and with it the operation of the Proms, under the former Music Controller John Drummond. Drummond, like Hearst, believed that the music programmes' presentation was too stiff and formal and he therefore encouraged announcers to be more natural and enthusiastic. Repeats of classic drama performances by the likes of John Gielgud and Paul Scofield were also included because, in his view, newer drama was "gloomy and pretentious". He also introduced features and celebrations of the anniversaries of famous figures including William Glock, Michael Tippett and Isaiah Berlin. Drummond also introduced the show Mixing It which targeted the music genres that fell between Radios 1 and 3, often seen as a precursor to the programme Late Junction.During Drummond's time, Radio 3 also began to experiment with outside broadcasts, including an ambitious Berlin Weekend to mark the reunification of Germany in 1990, and a much praised weekend of programming that was broadcast from London and Minneapolis-St Paul – creating broadcasting history by being the first time a whole weekend had been transmitted "live from another continent". However, Drummond complained about the former that "not one single senior person in the BBC had listened to any part of it", reflecting his general feeling that the BBC senior management paid little attention stating: "I can't remember ever having a serious conversation with anyone above me in the BBC about Radio 3... I would much rather have had the feeling that they thought it mattered what Radio 3 did."
Drummond's successor was Nicholas Kenyon, previously chief music critic of The Observer, who took over in February 1992 and was immediately faced with the looming launch date for commercial competitor Classic FM who were, and still remain, Radio 3's biggest rivals. Kenyon, similar to Singer a decade earlier, believed that Radio 3 had to make changes to its presentation before the new station began broadcasting rather than react later. As a result, three senior producers were sent to study classical music stations in the United States and the station hired advertising agents Saatchi & Saatchi to help improve public perception. Kenyon's tenure was to meet with much controversy: in attempts to update the station's presentation, popular announcers Malcolm Ruthven, Peter Barker and Tony Scotland were axed as well as drama being cut by a quarter, resulting in a letter of protest to The Times signed by Harold Pinter, Tom Stoppard and Fay Weldon among others; new weekday programmes for breakfast time and drive time, entitled On Air and In Tune respectfully, were launched, as was a new three-hour programme of popular classics on Sunday mornings fronted by Brian Kay.
These moves were defended by Kenyon who argued that the changes were not "some ghastly descent into populism" but were instead to create "access points" for new listeners. However, there was still "widespread disbelief" when it was announced in the summer that a new morning programme would take the 9am spot from the revered Composer of the Week and would be presented by a signing from Classic FM – the disc jockey Paul Gambaccini. The criticism, especially once the programme went on air a few weeks later, was so unrelenting that Gambaccini announced the following spring that he would not be renewing his contract with Radio 3.
However, Kenyon's controllership was marked by several highly distinguished programming successes. Fairest Isle was an ambitious project from 1995 which marked the 300th anniversary of the death of Henry Purcell with a year-long celebration of British music and the programme Sounding the Century, which ran for two years from 1997, presented a retrospective of 20th-century music. Both won awards.
He also introduced a number of well received specialist programmes including children's programme The Music Machine, early music programme Spirit of the Age, jazz showcase Impressions, vocal music programme Voices and the arts programme Night Waves.
BBC Radio 3 began nighttime transmissions in May 1996 with the introduction of Through the Night, consisting of radio recordings from members of the European Broadcasting Union and distributed to some of these other stations under the title Euroclassic Notturno since 1998. The introduction of 24-hour broadcasting resulted in the introduction of a fixed programming point at 22:00 so that if live programme overran, later programming could be cancelled to allow Through the Night to begin promptly.
File:Max Reinhardt, radio broadcaster.jpg|thumb|Max Reinhardt, former presenter of Late Junction
In 1998, Roger Wright took over as controller of the station. Soon after his appointment some changes were made to showcase a wider variety of music; a new, relaxed, late-night music programme Late Junction featured a wide variety of genres; programmes focusing on jazz and world music were given a higher profile as were programmes presented by Brian Kay, focusing on light music, and Andy Kershaw, whose show was previously dropped by Radio 1. In these changes, Wright believed that, in the case of the former, he was addressing "this feeling people had that they didn't want to put Radio 3 on unless they were going to listen carefully" and in the latter cases that he was "not dumbing down but smarting up" the programmes.
By 2004, Radio 3's programming and services were being recognised by the Corporation at large, as seen in the 2003/4 Charter renewal application and the Annual report for the year which reported that Radio 3 had "achieved a record reach in the first quarter of 2004", and by the government: the Secretary of State's foreword to the government's Green Paper in 2005 made special mention of "the sort of commitment to new talent that has made Radio 3 the largest commissioner of new music in the world" as a model for what the BBC should be about.
By 2008, however, the station faced pressures to increase its audience by making programmes more accessible while loyal listeners began to complain about the tone of these new changes. Presentation was described as "gruesome in tone and level" and global music output was mocked as "street-smart fusions" and "global pop". At the same time RAJAR began to record lower listening figures and decisions on policy were being changed resulting in the children's programme Making Tracks, experimental music programme Mixing It, theatre and film programme Stage and Screen and Brian Kay's Light Programme all being dropped, a reduction in the number of concerts and format changes to several other programmes. In spite of the changes, figures still continued to fall.
The mid- to late 2000s did, however, offer new projects undertaken on the station: The Beethoven Experience in June 2005 saw the broadcast of his works broadcast non-stop for six days. A similar project occurred six months later when A Bach Christmas was run for ten days in the lead to Christmas and in February 2007 when a week was similarly given over to the works of Tchaikovsky & Stravinsky, and Schubert in March 2012. As part of the original Beethoven Experience, the BBC trialled its first music downloads over the internet by offering free music downloads of all nine symphonies as played by the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra under Gianandrea Noseda. The stated aim was "to gauge audiences' appetite for music downloads and their preferred content, and will inform the development of the BBC strategy for audio downloads and on demand content". The experiment was wildly successful, attracting 1.4 million downloads but was met with anger from the major classical record labels who considered it unfair competition and "devaluing the perceived value of music". As a result, no further free downloads have been offered, including as part of the BBC iPlayer service, and the BBC Trust has ruled out any classical music podcasts with extracts longer than one minute.
In 2007, Radio 3 also began to experiment with a visual broadcast as well as the audio transmissions. In October 2007, Radio 3 collaborated with the English National Opera in presenting a live video stream of a performance of Carmen, "the first time a UK opera house has offered a complete production online" and in September 2008, Radio 3 launched a filmed series of concerts that was available to watch live and on demand for seven days "in high quality vision". This strategy was also introduced to some of the BBC Proms concerts.
By the latter years of the 2000s, Radio 3's prospects were improving. The year 2008/9 saw the introduction of more concerts and other innovations had introduced Radio 3's largest event to a wider audience. The introduction of family orientated concerts to the BBC Proms, which are broadcast live on Radio 3, helped the station to introduce itself to a younger audience. Innovations of this type began in 2008 with the introduction of a concert celebrating the music from the television programme Doctor Who as composed by Murray Gold and was later followed by a further Doctor Who prom in 2010, a free family prom in 2009, another free Horrible Histories prom in 2011 and a Wallace and Gromit prom in 2012. These particular concerts were introduced by Wright, who became Proms Director in addition to his duties at Radio 3 in October 2007, and many were also televised for broadcast at a later date. The mix in these proms of classical music to combine with music of a classical nature from the programmes was hoped to introduce a much younger audience to the genres catered for by Radio 3.
Radio 3 was having to undergo further changes as a result of recent findings from the BBC Trust. In the station's latest service review, carried out in 2010, the Trust recommended the station become more accessible to new audiences, easier to navigate through the different genres and to review the output of the BBC's orchestras and singers. Soon after this verdict, the licence fee was capped and the BBC given more services to pay for with the same level of income. As a result, the corporation had to reduce its costs. In the proposal entitled Delivering Quality First, the BBC proposed that Radio 3 contribute by broadcasting 25% fewer live or specially recorded lunchtime concerts and reducing the number of specially recorded evening concerts. The Trust did recognise, however, that "Radio 3 plays a vital role in the cultural and creative life of the UK" and as a result, the report did agree to reinvest in the Proms, to retain the long dramas found on the station and to continue to broadcast a new concert live each evening.
The current controller of Radio 3 is Sam Jackson, who replaced Alan Davey in April 2023.