Just realised "What the Papers Say" on R4...

[2ManySweets]

...is no more! Just gone like that !

Actually gutted.

Oh, apparently we knew the end was coming. It was one of those programmes that I let wash over me - London people talking amongst themselves about the Westminster/Fleet Street bubble.

I read that; didn't realise the programme had such a chequered history...

Don't listen to "The Media Show" - now THATS the worst of media London types self fellating. Urgh.

ahhhh... thanks for explaining that. I listened & outside bubbles. Oh well.

You think that's bad?

I've just turned to the R3 schedule on iplayer - Essential Classics has a daily ( daily! ) challenge "identify a piece of music played backwards" ...

And across the whole R3 schedule (setting aside Hear & Now) in the last 6 weeks I'm not sure they've broadcast more than six pieces I haven't heard a hundred times before.

Sorry, not R4 but not worth a whole thread.

Why do our favourite radio stations' schedules get tinkered with so mercilessly?

😢

A while back they had The Flight of the Bumblebee played backwards and it sounded almost the same.

However, I do recall one quiz being to find the link between wholly unconnected pieces of music and the answer was "they all have the same Opus number".

?

Does anyone else remember Face The Music? Not radio, admittedly, but highbrow - well, it seemed highbrow to me as a child. It was a BBC2 quiz show about classical music. One round had the chairman, Joseph Cooper, playing a piece of music on a dummy keyboard, so the contestants had to work out what it was just from looking at his hands. One of them (was it Robin Ray?) was always very good at that. To me it seemed like witchcraft. In other rounds, the contestants had to guess not just the composer but the name of the piece and (I think) the opus number. It was wonderful. I can't imagine the BBC broadcasting something like that on TV now.

Radio 3 is also massively dumbed down from the pre-Classic FM days. I wish I could find the wonderful Dead Ringers sketch about the Radio 3 announcer. It went something like this:

[portentous deep male voice]
And that brings to a close this four-hour live broadcast of Bruckner's final symphony. Unfortunately, not everyone was paying full attention. Don't think we didn't notice that some of you got up to put the kettle on and there were even a few listeners who answered the phone. So we're going to have to start all over again from the beginning, and we'll keep on playing this until everyone has heard every note...