BBC Third Programme
The
BBC Third Programme was the third national radio network broadcast by the
BBC, founded in
1946 and subsequently incorporated, in
1970, into
BBC Radio 3. The other two were the
Home Service (mainly speech based) and the
Light Programme, dedicated to light music, usually cover versions of popular music of the day played by the "in-house" BBC orchestras. The Home Service is now known as
Radio 4 and the
Light Programme is
Radio 2. After the death of
Sir Henry Wood the BBC stepped in to sponsor his
Promenade concerts, carrying them live every night on the Third Programme.
When it started on 29 September
1946 it broadcast for 5 hours a night from 7pm to midnight, but its duration was cut from 40 hours a week to 24 hours a week in
1957 for a few years, until the launch of the Music Programme, then from 7am to midnight (although with only the evening output branded as "Third Programme"). The Third Programme continued as a separate evening service on the same frequency after the inception of Radio 3 in 1967, but was absorbed into Radio 3 in April 1970. It was the first station to multifrequency on 909 kHz (
MF) and 90.0 to 92.5 MHz (
FM).
Its existence was controversial from the start, partly because of perceived "elitism" - it was sometimes criticised for programmes of "two
dons talking" and also for the costs of output relative to a small listener
reach. In actuality its existence went against Reithian principles, as
Reith himself had, during his time at the BBC, been against segmenting audiences by splitting programming genres across different networks. From the first it did have some prominent supporters; the
Education Secretary in the
Attlee government,
Ellen Wilkinson, spoke rather optimistically of creating a "third programme nation." When it faced cuts in 1957, The Third Programme Defense Society was formed and its leaders included
T. S. Eliot,
Albert Camus, and
Sir Laurence Olivier.
The network was dedicated to the discerning or "high-brow" listener providing serious classical music, concerts and plays as well as room for modern composers, and jazz. Speech formed a much higher proportion of output than the later Radio 3. Particularly notable in its drama productions were the radio plays of
Samuel Beckett and the
Hilda Tablet plays by
Henry Reed.
Martin Esslin was particularly associated with the network's productions of european drama.
The Third Programme is still much missed by older listeners, who often assert that its replacement by Radio 3 was a retrograde step. Some of its high-minded mission has arguably been taken up on television by
BBC Four, which fittingly commissioned and broadcast a documentary about the programme's rise and fall.
*
Christopher Pemberton*
Alvar Lidell*
Patrick Butler*
List of BBC related topics* Carpenter, Humphrey.
"The Envy of the World: Fifty Years of the Third Programme and Radio Three" , Weidenfeld & Nicholson , (November 10, 1997) , ISBN 0753802503.
*
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.
*
The Envy of the World: Fifty Years of the Third Programme and Radio Three by Humphrey Carpenter
