BBC Third Programme: Difference between revisions

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The '''BBC Third Programme''' was a national radio station produced and broadcast from 1946 until 1967, when it was replaced by [[BBC Radio 3|Radio 3]]. It first went on the air on 29 September 1946 and quickly became one of the leading cultural and intellectual forces in [[Great Britain|Britain]], playing aan crucialimportant role in disseminating the arts, playing mainly [[classical music]].<ref>{{cite book |last=Hewison |first=Robert |year=1995 |title=Culture and Consensus: England, Art and Politics Since 1940 |publisher=[[Methuen Publishing]] |___location=London |isbn=0-413-69060-1 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=NHDbCQAAQBAJ |via=[[Google Books]]}}</ref>{{page needed|date=February 2020}} It was the [[BBC]]'s third national radio network, the other two being the [[BBC Home Service|Home Service]] (mainly speech-based) and the [[BBC Light Programme|Light Programme]], principally devoted to [[light entertainment]] and [[light music|music]].

==History==

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The network was broadly cultural, a [[F.R. Leavis|Leavisite]] experiment dedicated to the discerning or "high-brow" listener from an educated, minority audience. Its founders' aims were seen as promoting "something fundamental to our civilisation" and as contributing to "the refinement of society".<ref>{{cite book |last=Carpenter |first=Humphrey |date=1996 |title=The Envy of the World: Fifty Years of the Third Programme and Radio Three |publisher=[[Weidenfeld and Nicolson]] |___location=London |isbn=0-7538-0250-3 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=oYLHQgAACAAJ |via=[[Google Books]]}}</ref>{{page needed|date=February 2020}} Its musical output provided a wide range of serious [[classical music]] and live concerts, as well as contemporary composers and [[jazz]]; popular classical music such as [[Ludwig van Beethoven|Beethoven]], [[Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart|Mozart]] and [[Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky|Tchaikovsky]] primarily remained on the [[BBC Home Service|Home Service]] until 1964. Voice formed a much higher proportion of its output than the later Radio 3, with specially commissioned plays, poetry readings, talks and documentaries. Nationally known intellectuals such as [[Bertrand Russell]] and [[Isaiah Berlin]] on philosophy or [[Fred Hoyle]] on cosmology were regular contributors.

The network became a principal patron of the arts, within commissioned many music works for broadcast by the BBC Music Department, playing aan crucialimportant role in the development of the career of composers such as [[Benjamin Britten]]. Particularly notable were its drama productions, including the radio plays of [[Samuel Beckett]], [[Henry Reed (poet)|Henry Reed]] (the [[Hilda Tablet]] plays), [[Harold Pinter]], [[Wyndham Lewis]], [[Joe Orton]] and [[Dylan Thomas]], whose ''[[Under Milk Wood]]'' was written specially for the programme. [[Philip O'Connor]] discovered [[Quentin Crisp]] in his radio interviews in 1963. [[Martin Esslin]], BBC Director of Drama (Radio), was associated with the network's productions of [[Europe|European]] drama, and [[Douglas Cleverdon]] with its productions of poetry and radio plays.

The Third Programme's contribution to contemporary poetry and criticism was outstandingsignificant, under producers and presenters such as [[John Wain]], [[Ludovic Kennedy]], [[George MacBeth]] and [[Patrick Dickinson]];. here itIt promoted young writers such as [[Philip Larkin]] and [[Kingsley Amis]], as well as the "difficult" work of [[David Jones (poet)|David Jones]] and [[Laura Riding]]. The Third Programme was for many years the single largest source of [[copyright]] payments to poets.

The decision to close down the Third Programme was opposed by many within the BBC, some of them senior figures. Within the music division, a 'BBC rebellion' gathered force, with its most vocal members including [[Hans Keller]] and [[Robert Simpson (composer)|Robert Simpson]]. Ultimately however, the attempt to prevent the culture-conscious Third being replaced by what Keller called "a daytime music station" proved unsuccessful.{{fact|date=February 2020}}