No more mid-concert news breaks, promises Radio 3 boss

THE boss of BBC Radio 3 has promised to rip up the schedule and play concerts without interruption following complaints from viewers.

Alan Davey, the classical station’s controller, said he wants to give musical performances the time they deserve, rather cutting them short to fit the timetable.

‘It’s really important that we broadcast complete works and complete concerts,’ he said.

‘It doesn’t matter how long they are. We will refit our schedule around them and so we don’t say it has to be 45 minutes long.’ He added that it is about ‘giving the music the time to breathe’. Mr Davey’s comments follow anger from Radio 3 listeners over the number of news bulletins, quizzes – and, at one point, phone-ins – which are allowed to interrupt music on air.

The controller called this latest approach ‘slow radio’, following a similar ‘slow television’ project on BBC4. Designed as an antidote to the frenetic pace of modern life, in May the channel aired an unedited two-hour canal trip down one of Britain’s waterways.