The dumbing-down of BBC Radio 3

In March, Alan Davey will step down as the controller of BBC Radio 3. His role over the past eight years has been huge. Not only has he overseen programming and strategy for Radio 3 and BBC orchestras, but he has also championed access to contemporary music and focused on forgotten past composers, many of whom are female. All very impressive. But there’s no escaping the fact that under his watch there has been a general dumbing-down of programming.

Each year, the BBC Proms finds a new way to diversify its output, from proms based around video games, to rap, to an ‘Ibiza-style’ dance party. Even more egregiously, two years ago Radio 3 rebranded its late-morning show as Essential Classics. Presenter Ian Skelly was dropped and the three-hour show has become nauseatingly pedestrian, indulging requests for easy listening, folk and jazz which don’t do any favours for the competent presenter Georgia Mann. The changes were described by one newspaper as a ‘catastrophe’. The programme is now so inane it makes me want to rip my digital radio from the kitchen shelf and smash it through the window.

If you want to hear ‘The Entertainer’ by Scott Joplin, followed by the theme from Jaws and incorrectly pronounced Italian arias, that’s what Classic FM is for. The new kid on the block, Scala Radio, also indulges in easy-listening, digestible ‘classics’. The BBC should resist the urge to serve us the same smorgasbord of schmaltz.

I’m afraid it’s got to the point where I just can’t listen to Radio 3 any more. I feel guilty, like I’m abandoning an old friend. For years I’ve been awoken by Petroc Trelawny’s warm, assuring voice (not in person, I hasten to add). And I’ve been a guest on In Tune many times, sitting opposite the twinkly Sean Rafferty.