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[[Image:BBC Broadcasting House 532073098.jpg|thumb|BBC [[Broadcasting House]] in [[London]]]]
The '''BBC Third Programme''' was a national radio service produced and broadcast by the [[BBC]] between 1946 and 1967. It first went on the air on 29 September 1946 and quickly became one of the leading cultural and intellectual forces in Britain, playing a crucial role in disseminating the arts.<ref> Hewison, Robert (1995). ''Culture and Consensus: England, Art and Politics Since 1940''. London: Methuen. {{ISBN|0413690601}}.</ref> 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 music. The Third Programme was rebranded to [[BBC Radio 3]] on 30 September 1967.
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==Output and programming==
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>Carpenter, Humphrey (1996). ''The Envy of the World: Fifty Years of the Third Programme and Radio Three''. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson. {{ISBN|0-7538-0250-3}}.</ref> 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 Beethoven, Mozart and Tchaikovsky primarily remained on the 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. It commissioned many music works for broadcast by the BBC Music Department, playing a crucial 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 European drama, and [[Douglas Cleverdon]] with its productions of poetry and radio plays.
The Programme's contribution to contemporary poetry and criticism was outstanding, under producers and presenters such as [[John Wain]], [[Ludovic Kennedy]], [[George MacBeth]] and [[Patrick Dickinson]]; here it 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.
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==External links==
* [http://www.lib.udel.edu/ud/spec/findaids/bbc.htm BBC Third Programme Scripts catalogue] The collection of [[Douglas Cleverdon]], a leading talks and drama producer for the Third, at the University of Delaware Library.
* [http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio3/classical/thirdprogramme/ 60th anniversary]
{{Former national BBC radio stations}}
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