The Third World
The month of April 1970, if remembered at all, is remembered for two landmark moments in modern cultural history that made front pages around the globe – the drama of Apollo 13’s aborted moon mission and the news that Paul McCartney had ‘quit’ The Beatles; the former represented the apogee of the world’s fascination with the American space programme, whilst the latter served as pop’s final severance with its age of innocence. However, that month also saw another ending as significant in its own humble little way. April 1970 was just four days old when a controversial yet passionately cherished British broadcasting institution disappeared from the airwaves forever – the BBC Third Programme.
I was born a couple of months after the Light Programme and the Home Service were replaced by Radios 1, 2 and 4, so have no first-hand memory of them or their esoteric sibling, the Third Programme. Radio 3 may also have debuted on the same day as 1, 2 and 4, but contrary to popular belief (not to mention numerous online sources), the Third did not join the Light and the Home on the same shuttle service to the wireless necropolis in September 1967. It clung onto the evening hours for another two and-a-half years before time was finally called on a radio station unlike any other before or since. That the Third managed to receive a stay of execution when the rest of the BBC’s radio network underwent the most radical transformation in its history is testament to the friends it had in high places; but much in the same way that the sixpence survived the cull of £sd coinage in 1971 and remained legal tender for a little while longer, the Third Programme’s days were permanently numbered for the last couple of years of its existence. The far-reaching conclusions of the report ‘Broadcasting in the Seventies’ (published in 1969) failed to envisage a future need for the kind of service the Third had provided since its inception in 1946.
In the immediate aftermath of the Second World War there were many reflections on what precisely the Allies had been fighting for, and some concluded culture ranked high on the list of western civilisation’s worthwhile achievements. Such a view had also flourished during the war itself with the formation of the Council for the Encouragement of Music and Arts, which was renamed the Arts Council of Great Britain following the end of hostilities. As well as heavy government investment in public events such as exhibitions, opera, ballet, the theatre and the 1951 Festival of Britain, there was a widespread belief that the most widely accessible medium of the era, radio, also had a part to play in this promotion of culture. Despite the opposition of the BBC’s ex-Director General Lord Reith – who had always been against segregation in broadcasting – the BBC Third Programme was launched on 29 September 1946 with a specific remit from the start. The opening night included a 45-minute Bach recital on the harpsichord, an address by the Prime Minister of South Africa, some Monteverdi Madrigals ‘on gramophone’, a concert of choral music from the BBC Symphony Orchestra, and a discussion that promised to contain ‘issues of current interest as well as recurrent abstract problems’. Quite a contrast with the likes of ‘ITMA’ and ‘Variety Band-Box’ over on the Light Programme that same evening, but a clear message of intent that here was something brave and deliberately uncompromising in British broadcasting. When the legacy of the post-war Attlee government is discussed today, it is mostly the social reforms that are focused on, but belief that the Arts mattered was also key to the Left philosophy; Education Secretary Ellen Wilkinson even spoke of a ‘Third Programme Nation’.
The Third Programme may have featured traditional ‘classical music’ as part of its schedule, but it also gave airtime to the increasingly experimental and avant-garde strain of contemporary classical that would have caused British industry to grind to a halt had any of it interrupted the jolly soundtrack of ‘Music while you Work’. It also facilitated the birth of the iconic BBC Radiophonic Workshop, whose influence can still be discerned throughout electronically-based music to this very day. Yet it was the spoken word that the Third revelled in – and not in the Talk Radio sense of giving disgruntled gobshites in love with the sound of their own voices an opportunity to host phone-ins about immigration or the EU. Lectures and discussions from the likes of Bertrand Russell, Albert Camus and other heavyweight intellectuals of the day were crucial to the Third’s identity and reputation, but so was giving exposure to the works of radical playwrights such as Beckett and Pinter, and poets who had no other broadcasting outlets such as T.S. Eliot and Sylvia Plath; Dylan Thomas wrote ‘Under Milk Wood’ for the Third, such was the station’s standing within the artistic community, not to mention that it was the prime source of copyright payments for poets.
Of course, it didn’t take long for accusations of elitism to be levelled at this unashamed highbrow presence on the nation’s airwaves, despite the fact that it was catering for audiences (albeit small ones) that hadn’t been catered for by radio before. Similar accusations are often levelled at BBC4 today. Who do these cultural types think they are – demanding that their own erudite tastes be funded by the licence fee? The fact is that devotees of the Third paid the same amount as devotees of ‘Housewives’ Choice’, regardless of the vast chasm between listening figures, and were just as entitled to have radio representation. However, some of the criticisms aimed at the Third predictably had an impact when the BBC instigated one of its occasional pruning exercises. After eleven years of transmitting between 6.00pm and midnight, 1957 saw the Third cut in half, with the early evening segment taken over by the wonderfully named Network Three, an educational strand sounding more like a clandestine government department. Then, in 1965 the BBC Music Programme began broadcasting classical music during the day on the Third’s frequency, paving the way for Radio 3.
When the BBC belatedly woke-up to the need for music radio to reflect the dramatic changes in listening habits during the 60s and recruited a crew of pirate station DJs in time for the launch of groovy Radio 1 in 1967, it also decided to rebrand the Light Programme and the Home Service as Radio 2 and Radio 4 respectively. The Third Programme was a trickier proposition. Its audiences may have been small, but its place at the heart of the nation’s cultural life was so beloved that attempts to axe it met with fierce opposition. A compromise was reached that saw the Music Programme become Radio 3 during the daytime hours whilst the Third and Network Three continued to occupy the evening hours. However, as many began to express dissatisfaction with the rebranded radio stations, the report that came to be known as Broadcasting in the Seventies was commissioned and its findings resulted in a clearer division between the functions of the respective stations that have more or less defined them ever since. For the Third, the writing was on the wall and it finally disappeared for good in April 1970; plays, documentaries, discussion and education were shunted to Radio 4, and classical music overtook the majority of Radio 3’s extended airtime.
Even now, over 40 years after it was laid to rest, those who remember the Third Programme maintain Radio 3 is a poor substitute for its predecessor, a station that prefers the easy option of a music schedule with occasional spoken word interludes rather than the more challenging and adventurous remit of the Third. Perhaps the Third Programme was destined to be a short-lived heroic failure, a product of a period when the Arts were regarded as important to the nation’s wellbeing as health, housing or education, an admirable concept that now appears quaint to the defiantly philistine, anti-intellectual ear of the 21st century, when culture is viewed as more suspect and more elitist than ever before. Maybe the Third Programme was elitist, but as Paul McCartney once said of ‘Silly Love Songs’, what’s wrong with that?
Petunia Winegum
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November 14, 2014 at 10:52 am -
That is the big problem with socialism, isn’t it?
The protagonists are clever enough to understand it, and understand that it is all about “jam tomorrow”, whilst those that could benefit from the idealistic world that socialism would bring them, want “jam today”.
In the meantime, we should pursue our cultural interests…
Clever socialists will continue to go “third” and the rest of us, will remain wedded to “strictly”, or “match of the day”.
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November 14, 2014 at 11:22 am -
If the BBC is only there to respond to “the market” then it should indeed join the market. By the same token if it is not “in the market” then it should not be paying the sort of money that “the market” pays. This of course requires performers who do not either merit, or do not demand the “top market” rates. The BBC could indeed have become a feeder for British culture. Instead it’s just a flatulent slug parasitising the indolent goodwill of the silent majority. As Russ Tamblyn said at the end of The Haunting, “They should burn it down and sow the ground with salt.”
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November 14, 2014 at 12:20 pm -
Radio 3 neatly exposes the conflict of interests (one could call it hypocrisy) of the political left.
On the one hand, the “nanny-knows-best” instinct would suggest that a station devoted to improving the minds of its listeners would be a Good Thing. On the other hand, the disssemination of a wide range of thinkers’ thoughts could encourage people to challenge the status quo, and thus be a Bad Thing. Conclusion: it’s better to leave the proles with their diet of bread and circuses than to stimulate their imaginations and risk trouble ahead. Flatulent slug of a parasitical BBC, indeed.
In Singapore, a remarkable success story by any standards, Lee Kuan Yew, the then Prime Minister, once proudly proclaimed: “We don’t give the people what they want. We give them what’s good for them.”
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November 14, 2014 at 4:11 pm -
their diet of bread and circuses
We (intellectual snobs that we were and which I probably remain) actually referred to Radio One when it first came out as Prole Feed
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November 14, 2014 at 12:48 pm -
I think the really sad thing is that the4se things are never reinstated, but always just dumbed down and simplified. I really do think there is a real market today for the sort of holistic programme that the Third Programme provided. With some bravery and in a spirit of commitment to improving our cultural knowledge of the world the BBC would find a strong audience – even today.
However, like everyone they simply tend to categorise according to demographics. “Talkers”, Teens”, “Comedy”, “Old”, “Youth” and base programme content on what they are told “people of that kind” like.
The only way to get the Third Programme or similar back, is to create a Pirate Station – what a turn up!
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November 14, 2014 at 12:56 pm -
Much of the content of the Third Programme is no longer urgently needed. A vast range of classical music is readily available as CDs or downloads. (For instance from the BBC iPlayer.)
Literature in English up to 1920 is available free from the Gutenberg site. There are thousands of web forums for serious discussion of all kinds of topics.Any teenager with above average intelligence is now made to go to a university.
Things were quite different in the 1940s and 1950s.
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November 14, 2014 at 12:57 pm -
Yet another conundrum for our times……
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November 14, 2014 at 2:46 pm -
As is the fact that folk are far moor interested in the heroic failure of Apollo 13 these days, than they are in the giant successful steps of Apollo’s 11, 12, 14, 15, 16 and 17.
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November 14, 2014 at 4:16 pm -
A really interesting bit of cultural history which I was pretty much unaware of and which I see as highly relevant. The only thing I would miss of England if I moved abroad would be Radio 4 and that thankfully is now available anywhere in the world at the click of a mouse.
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November 14, 2014 at 4:24 pm -
November 14, 2014 at 6:57 pm -
“The only thing I would miss of England if I moved abroad would be Radio 4”
Along with a dire lack of Radio4, when I moved to West Germany, I pined for HP Sauce, PG Tips and Walker’s S&V (you can take the boy out of the Culinary Diaspora that was early 80s’ Britain… ). I recall my absolute delight upon discovering the height of the tower block we lived in, in Emden, allowed me to get LW Radio4. From that point on, I awoke daily to the Shipping Forecast followed by The Body Count- the Today Program always starts with how many souls have perished in whatever disaster has overtaken humanity in general that night. The Body Count is then followed by the Main Story, which by law I think, has to be about the plight of some lesser known British Domestic Bird . This is accorded more airtime and journalistic endeavour than a tsunami in Backwardstan ,Genocide in Bongo-Bongo land or atomic meltdown anywhere. 40,000 may have died from Ebola/Flu/Bubonic Plague but it seems comforting to the British to know that some long haired vegan is fighting to preserve the habitat of the Great Crested Multicolored Warbler Tit…and that in far greater depth than a Trivial Pursuit answer generally requires.
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November 14, 2014 at 10:40 pm -
I came to Radio 4 fairly early, in fact even before it was Radio 4, when in my early teens in the 1960s – the glitzy mind-candy of pop music was one thing, but the sheer range of eclectic topics covered on Radio 4 proved that your education never ends. Despite having a very good schooling, I credit Radio 4 with my real education, showing by exposure just how many interesting things are out there yet to be discovered.
Much of my working life involved long motorway driving: without Radio 4 this would have been abject misery, but with it countless hours and more than a million miles flashed by, immeasurably enhanced by whatever was on the schedule at the time. Comedy, news, reviews, arts, politics, international, even Woman’s Hour, whatever, it all brought something new to learn, enjoy and ponder. True, I may have landed here with immense breadth and little depth, but my general awareness is far broader than those peers who choose other channels for their entertainment and lower enlightenment.
Although no fan of the License Fee, I would happily pay an equivalent just for Radio 4 but I’m probably in such a minority that it could not be funded that way. The same is true of Radio 3, part or present, good quality it may be, but seeking out enough devotees to cover its cost voluntarily would surely prove futile.
The BBC has its many faults and its intensely annoying agendas but a lifetime of travelling to other lands, seeing and hearing their national broadcasters, leads to my conclusion that no other model to date has got anywhere near delivering the range and quality for the price. There’s some life in old Auntie Radio yet.-
November 14, 2014 at 11:03 pm -
BBC radio is paid for by all the poor suckers who pay for the TV, so is actually the last outpost of cultural elitism anyway. As a non-license payer I get it all for free.
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November 14, 2014 at 11:06 pm -
“The only thing I would miss of England if I moved abroad would be Radio 4 and that thankfully is now available anywhere in the world at the click of a mouse.”
I listen to it every day on my smart phone while driving to work in Florida, so no need for even a mouse. Radio 4 Extra is also good sometimes.
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November 15, 2014 at 10:23 am -
@Mudplugger
This is exactly my experience ….I had a reasonably good academic education but it was stultifyingly narrow and shallow. I credit Radio 4 (together with a few other more personal influences) with giving me an appetite for breadth and depth which is all I really mean when I use the term intellectual. I am far from certain one needs a ‘good’ academic education (based as it is now on an ability to memorise and reason in a limited and narrow field) to aspire to intellectual understanding. Intellectual is perhaps one of the most abused terms in the English language (its worth looking up its Latin origin to understand its true meaning) and has largely been appropriated by left wing academics who have never got over what they see as the greatest achievement of their lives namely actually making it to University (not unlike certain public school boys who never really get over their public school and go much beyond it) and thereby obtaining what they see as some status. Shame really they didn’t devote a little effort to trying to become human beings …….and thereby learn to enjoy themselves by looking beyond themselves rather than looking to stay in their narrow field and feed their egos. Some see the essence of being British as warm beer and cricket but I think listening to Radio 4 when there is some individual expounding (about the topic but not about him or her self) with enthusiasm and understanding on some obscure topic (and not necessarily one that I will want to follow up) that I have never heard of before encapsulates what is Best of British ….the antithesis of the preening popular celebrity whose life is all about themselves-
November 15, 2014 at 10:41 am -
the antithesis of the preening popular celebrity whose life is all about themselves …..their clothes, their holidays, their ‘friends’, where they last sang or danced, their charitable interests, their personal likes and dislikes
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November 15, 2014 at 12:04 pm -
I often feel like I’m the only person I know who didn’t attend university, but my true academic education has been the local library and Radio 4 (and to a certain extent in recent years, BBC4). ‘From Our Own Correspondent’ is a particularly eye-opening window on the world that puts television news to shame, one of the unsung jewels in the British broadcasting crown.
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November 15, 2014 at 1:02 pm -
I am not sure a modern vocational degree amounts to much more than a training to carry out a function ……to perform that function ideally if it is to be effective in a mindless unquestioning and obedient manner and not worry about outcomes. I insisted my children did few things but I did encourage them (for which read manipulated them as best I could) to read their first degrees in a discipline that had no other function or utility other than to make them broader and deeper individuals and look outside and beyond of themselves . I always thought my education was back to front …….a law degree to start with and then some belated and probably not very successful attempt to educate myself to be a human being …..and in so doing learn to enjoy life.
I wouldn’t worry about not going to University Uncle Petunia (I doubt you do though as you know it helps in earning a crust) you might have ended up clutching a piece of paper in your hand , turning your Radio to a different channel from Radio 4 coz you thought you had reached the zenith of human achievement and there was no need (and you had no wish) to learn anything more, questioning (and embracing) nothing that threatened your security and crossing the road in your smart suit when you saw someone passed out with drink on the side of the road — University having trained you to perform and not deviate from your function —-usually a function you were told as a child was ‘good’ though quite what that word was meant to convey I am not sure save that ‘good’ provided one with certain trappings that might make one ‘fit’ …..always assuming (a rather large assumption) one was naturally the right size to start with-
November 15, 2014 at 1:45 pm -
Too true. I’m surrounded by students in my neighbourhood, and a couple of minutes being sandwiched between their conversations in a supermarket queue tells me all I need to know about 21st century ‘further education’!
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November 16, 2014 at 8:17 am -
I live in a city that “achieved” university status a few years ago – worst thing that ever happened to what was once a nice quiet backwater.
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November 14, 2014 at 4:53 pm -
Being neither ‘intellectual’ enough, old enough nor cultured enough (Coq au Vin is a bunk up in a lorry as far as I is concerned, Guv) to care about The 3rd Program I shall simply chuck in a quote to this discussion as it seems relevant: “There’s a new channel on television. It’s called Channel 4 and it’s for minorities, like intellectuals and people who belong to jigsaw clubs.” and we all know what became of Channel 4, don’t we…
Maybe it’s better for all concerned that T3P died before it’s time, than morphed into the Channel 4 of the airwaves.
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November 14, 2014 at 6:22 pm -
“Maybe it’s better for all concerned that T3P died before it’s time”
It didn’t really die, just morphed into Radio3. The difference is that Radio3 broadcasts 24 hours a day, and that there is a greater proportion of music.
But there are still dramas, discussions and talks. I caught an interesting discussion last night about what we can learn from apes about the origins of language and culture.And every night there are six solid hours of classical music, including some very obscure stuff. The “Late Junction” program starting at 11pm three nights a week covers an enormous variety of types of music.
I’m not sure Radio3 is really needed any more, but it’s very nice to have it.
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November 14, 2014 at 7:14 pm -
I’m no longer at all clear what the BBC believes its role to be.
I always assumed that it didn’t need to compete in a commercial market. Therefore it could and should cater for minority audiencies. It should not be at all concerned with listening figures when considering content.
As the BBC is in the enviable position of not needing to attract advertising revenue, the BBC should concentrate on quality and diversity, and let the commercial stations worry about attracting huge listener numbers. -
November 14, 2014 at 9:20 pm -
I spent long hours listening to the Third Programme. I did not particularly like it. It was just that it was the strongest signal on Medium wave. It was the only signal that I could receive on my home made crystal radio as a boy. No transistor radios then.
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November 14, 2014 at 10:12 pm -
The Third Programme also carried live coverage of all home cricket Test Matches, thus boosting its audience quite a bit with the summer tones of John Arlott, Johnners, and Trevor Bailey.
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November 15, 2014 at 12:40 am -
The third was rather like the Cof E. Not attended to much but a comfort to know it was there.
Anyway if real democracy counted there would be a full time program of pornography. And probably of racism etc. -
November 15, 2014 at 12:22 pm -
There a lot of activities/places not well attended but a comfort to know they are still there struggling forlornly. Some church choirs, some bell ringing towers, some village cricket teams, boys activities, girls activities, school for some kids, village flower shows and fetes have been decimated due to H&S, kids playing out, old seaside resorts, youth hostels perhaps? All bits of old England slowly slip sliding away into multiculturalism and individualism. I listen to politically correct, somewhat to the left LBC…I eff the LBC quite frequently while it is on in the kitchen! The constantly repeated adverts drive me to another bout of effing. Amazingly, early evening, yesterday, Ian Dale interviewed a falsely accused ex headmaster who was accused of historical abuse. The jury said NOT GUILTY after about 20 MINUTES recently! He was allowed a good rant about all the nastiness and waiting involved. Prolonged bail and rough removal of papers and other household contents at two houses, just before Christmas. The destructive publicity. A lawyer gave some good suggestions how to sort out the gross unfairness. I wonder if the Beeb would air this in quite the same way…..hmmmm? Another teacher got let off in about 7 minutes recently too…..hurray.
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November 15, 2014 at 3:03 pm -
What makes you think that makes them vindicated? All the CPS need is another small coven to gather and they can have another try. There’s no such thing as Innocent – only “got away with it”.
This guy has been declared Not Guilty FOUR times in British courts in the past, but now the CPS have come up with another net full to busting and have landed him for the fifth time. Makes me proud to be British, what.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-29952090
No smoke without fire when the bonfires are lit.
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November 15, 2014 at 4:31 pm -
I was really moor thinking of the unusual publicity given to the unfairness of the whole business, arrest in front of the class. Disruptive house searches, treated as if guilty from the first contact with the law. Arresting just before Christmas, when on bail for months on end. I know there is a flavour of we know you have been up to something, we will hunt you down regardless of what a jury thinks. They did that with the old photographic artist some time ago…never got off his back till they had a result. Well aware of all the stuff that does NOT make me proud to be British. This man, as I understand it, may be able to go back into the school and continue to teach. He is not 95!
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