21February
We recommend: Gabriela Kulka on Radio 3 (OK, OK, that's Polish Radio 3.)
Tim Luckhurst laments the decline of Radio Five from a breaking-news station to chitter-chatter and sport. If the BBC is going to do chitter-chatter and sport, would it be grown-up enough to admit that its 1994 changes to the network were a gross error, and reverse them? Nigel and Earl had a point.
Jeff Smith will be the new head of music at Radio 2. He held a similar role at Radio 1 between 1997 and 2000, responsible for turning the station from a credible indie playlist into one focussing on pop and dance music.
The ECMAs were presented last Sunday, with three wins for bluegrasser JP Cormier, indie band the Joel Plaskett Emergency, and for alternative group In-Flight Safety.
In an update to our piece on Monday, William Barrington-Coupe has defended himself against charges of fraud, plagarism, and being totally out of tune in the Hatto Trick. Jessica Duchen has evidence that Mrs. Hatto was alive until 2006, removing one particular lingering doubt.
Geoffrey Wheatcroft laments the loss of the Third Programme (1946-2007). He speaks of Roger Wright, the intelligent but wrong-headed controller of the channel, axing the 4pm weekday programmes, a bitter blow that suggests a failure to understand what Radio 3 should be doing. Those programmes were in the tradition of using radio for what it's best at, talking about music as well as playing it, whether it was Edward Seckerson on show music, or Julian Joseph on jazz, or the delightful Ian Burnside's Voices
on Tuesday, either a thematic anthology of songs wittily introduced or a singer talking about her art. We're not going to rush to judgement on the schedule; best to let it bed in for a few weeks, become familiar to its rhymes and reasons, and then give a considered opinion.
