The BBC, Classic FM, and Intelligence

I assume you’re reading ArtsJournal every day.  If you’re not, you might as well be missing a body part.

Last week, ArtsJournal Editor Douglas McLennan (a Seattleite — yay!) and his fantastic staff posted an article from a British website that says we’re not as dumb as we think we are. We just don’t want our classical music presented in a stuffy way.  If you want to feel great about classical radio, I hope you’ll read the whole article.  It’s brief.

The article deconstructs the differences between BBC 3, the Beeb’s classical channel, and England’s commercial classical station, Classic FM.

Like any good marketing operation, Classic FM divides its audience into segments. It labels them nervous discoverers, background listeners, classics as pop, popular enthusiasts and connoisseurs, and it provides programmes tailored to each. In the morning, when there are more background listeners and nervous discoverers (the youngest of the groups, also the Radio 1 listeners), the music is bright, breezy and interspersed with news and talk. In the afternoon, programmes turn more soothing for the popular enthusiasts (older, affluent, more women than men). In the evening when listeners have time, and connoisseurs tune in, you get traditional concerts.

BBC 3, the article says, is elitist and stuffy.  I don’t agree at all, but then I’m one of those insiders who is superserved by the BBC, so I don’t count.

Whichever flavor you prefer, just imagine having access to TWO great classical stations.