The BBC Third Programme was a national radio station produced and broadcast from 1946 until 1967, when it was replaced by

BBC Radio 3 BBC Radio 3 is a British national radio station owned and operated by the BBC. It replaced the BBC Third Programme in 1967 and broadcasts classical music and opera, with jazz, world music, Radio drama, drama, High culture, culture and the arts ...

. It first went on the air on 29 September 1946 and became one of the leading cultural and intellectual forces in

Britain Britain most often refers to: * Great Britain, a large island comprising the countries of England, Scotland and Wales * The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, a sovereign state in Europe comprising Great Britain and the north-eas ...

, playing an important role in disseminating the arts, broadcasting music (mainly classical), plays, documentary features and talks. It was the

BBC The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) is a British public service broadcaster headquartered at Broadcasting House in London, England. Originally established in 1922 as the British Broadcasting Company, it evolved into its current sta ...

's third national radio network, the other two being the Home Service (mainly speech-based) and the Light Programme, principally devoted to light entertainment and

music Music is the arrangement of sound to create some combination of Musical form, form, harmony, melody, rhythm, or otherwise Musical expression, expressive content. Music is generally agreed to be a cultural universal that is present in all hum ...

History

When it started in 1946, the Third Programme broadcast for six hours each evening from 6.00 pm to midnight, although its output was cut to just 24 hours a week from October 1957, with the early part of weekday evenings being given over to educational programming (known as "Network Three"). The frequencies were also used during daytime hours to broadcast complete ball-by-ball commentary on test match cricket, under the title '' Test Match Special''. The Third's existence was controversial from the beginning, partly because of perceived "elitism" – it was sometimes criticised for broadcasting programmes of "two dons talking" – and also for the cost of its output relative to a small listener reach. Its existence was against the corporation's founding principles, as Reith himself had during his time at the BBC been against segmenting audiences by splitting programming genres across different networks. From the start, though, it had prominent supporters: the Education Secretary in the Attlee government, Ellen Wilkinson, spoke rather optimistically of creating a "third programme nation". When it faced those 1957 cuts, the Third Programme Defence Society was formed and its leaders included T. S. Eliot,

Albert Camus Albert Camus ( ; ; 7 November 1913 – 4 January 1960) was a French philosopher, author, dramatist, journalist, world federalist, and political activist. He was the recipient of the 1957 Nobel Prize in Literature at the age of 44, the s ...

, and Sir Laurence Olivier. This situation continued until the launch on 22 March 1965 of the BBC Music Programme, which began regular daily broadcasts of

classical music Classical music generally refers to the art music of the Western world, considered to be #Relationship to other music traditions, distinct from Western folk music or popular music traditions. It is sometimes distinguished as Western classical mu ...

(with some interruptions for live sports coverage) on the Network Three / Third Programme frequencies between 7.00 am and 6.30 pm on weekdays, 8.00 am and 12.30 pm on Saturdays, and 8.00 am and 5.00 pm on Sundays. The Third Programme continued as a distinct evening service, and this continued to be the case for a short while after the inception of

on 30 September 1967, before all the elements of the BBC's "third network" were finally absorbed into Radio 3 with rebranding effect from Saturday 4 April 1970.

Output and programming

The network was broadly cultural, a Leavisite experiment dedicated to the discerning or "high-brow" listener from an educated, minority audience. Its founders' aims were seen as promoting "something fundamental to our civilisation" and as contributing to "the refinement of society". Its musical output provided a wide range of serious

and live concerts, as well as contemporary composers and

jazz Jazz is a music genre that originated in the African-American communities of New Orleans, Louisiana, in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Its roots are in blues, ragtime, European harmony, African rhythmic rituals, spirituals, h ...

; popular classical music such as

Beethoven Ludwig van Beethoven (baptised 17 December 177026 March 1827) was a German composer and pianist. He is one of the most revered figures in the history of Western music; his works rank among the most performed of the classical music repertoire ...

Mozart Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (27 January 1756 – 5 December 1791) was a prolific and influential composer of the Classical period (music), Classical period. Despite his short life, his rapid pace of composition and proficiency from an early age ...

and

Tchaikovsky Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky ( ; 7 May 1840 – 6 November 1893) was a Russian composer during the Romantic period. He was the first Russian composer whose music made a lasting impression internationally. Tchaikovsky wrote some of the most popular ...

primarily remained on the Home Service until 1964. Voice formed a much higher proportion of its output than the later Radio 3, with specially commissioned plays, poetry readings, talks and documentaries. Nationally known intellectuals such as

Bertrand Russell Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell, (18 May 1872 – 2 February 1970) was a British philosopher, logician, mathematician, and public intellectual. He had influence on mathematics, logic, set theory, and various areas of analytic ...

and

Isaiah Berlin Sir Isaiah Berlin (6 June 1909 – 5 November 1997) was a Russian-British social and political theorist, philosopher, and historian of ideas. Although he became increasingly averse to writing for publication, his improvised lectures and talks ...

on philosophy or

Fred Hoyle Sir Fred Hoyle (24 June 1915 – 20 August 2001) was an English astronomer who formulated the theory of stellar nucleosynthesis and was one of the authors of the influential B2FH paper, B2FH paper. He also held controversial stances on oth ...

on cosmology were regular contributors. The network became a principal patron of the arts, within commissioned many music works for broadcast by the BBC Music Department, playing an important role in the development of the career of composers such as

Benjamin Britten Edward Benjamin Britten, Baron Britten of Aldeburgh (22 November 1913 – 4 December 1976) was an English composer, conductor, and pianist. He was a central figure of 20th-century British music, with a range of works including opera, o ...

. Particularly notable were its drama productions, including the radio plays of

Samuel Beckett Samuel Barclay Beckett (; 13 April 1906 – 22 December 1989) was an Irish writer of novels, plays, short stories, and poems. Writing in both English and French, his literary and theatrical work features bleak, impersonal, and Tragicomedy, tra ...

, Henry Reed (the Hilda Tablet plays),

Harold Pinter Harold Pinter (; 10 October 1930 – 24 December 2008) was a British playwright, screenwriter, director and actor. A List of Nobel laureates in Literature, Nobel Prize winner, Pinter was one of the most influential modern British dramat ...

Wyndham Lewis Percy Wyndham Lewis (18 November 1882 – 7 March 1957) was a British writer, painter and critic. He was a co-founder of the Vorticist movement in art and edited ''Blast (British magazine), Blast'', the literary magazine of the Vorticists. His ...

, Joe Orton and Dylan Thomas, whose ''

Under Milk Wood ''Under Milk Wood'' is a 1954 radio drama by Welsh people, Welsh poet Dylan Thomas. The BBC commissioned the play, which was later adapted for the stage. The first public reading was in New York City in 1953. A Under Milk Wood (1972 film), f ...

'' was written specially for the programme. Philip O'Connor discovered Quentin Crisp in his radio interviews in 1963. The series '' Inventions for Radio'' aired in 1964 and 1965, with

sound collage In music, montage (literally "putting together") or sound collage ("gluing together") is a technique where newly branded sound objects or Musical composition, compositions, including songs, are created from collage, also known as musique concrè ...

s by Delia Derbyshire of the

BBC Radiophonic Workshop The BBC Radiophonic Workshop was one of the sound effects units of the BBC, created in 1958 to produce Incidental music, incidental sounds and new music for radio and, later, television. The unit is known for its experimental and pioneering ...

Martin Esslin Martin Julius Esslin OBE (6 June 1918 – 24 February 2002) was a Hungarian-born British producer, dramatist, journalist, adaptor and translator, critic, academic scholar and professor of drama, known for coining the term " theatre of the ab ...

, BBC Director of Drama (Radio), was associated with the network's productions of

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an drama, and Douglas Cleverdon with its productions of poetry and radio plays. The Third Programme's contribution to contemporary poetry and criticism was significant, under producers and presenters such as John Wain, Ludovic Kennedy, George MacBeth and Patrick Dickinson. It promoted young writers such as Philip Larkin and

Kingsley Amis Sir Kingsley William Amis (16 April 1922 – 22 October 1995) was an English novelist, poet, critic and teacher. He wrote more than 20 novels, six volumes of poetry, a memoir, short stories, radio and television scripts, and works of social crit ...

, as well as the "difficult" work of David Jones and Laura Riding. The Third Programme was for many years the single largest source of

copyright A copyright is a type of intellectual property that gives its owner the exclusive legal right to copy, distribute, adapt, display, and perform a creative work, usually for a limited time. The creative work may be in a literary, artistic, ...

payments to poets. The decision to close down the Third Programme was opposed by many within the BBC, some of them senior figures. Within the music division, a "BBC rebellion" gathered force, with its most vocal members including Hans Keller and Robert Simpson. Ultimately however, the attempt to prevent the culture-conscious Third being replaced by what Keller called "a daytime music station" proved unsuccessful.

Controllers

* 1946–1948: George Barnes * 1948–1952: Harman Grisewood * 1953–1958: John Morris * 1959–1967: Howard Newby

Announcers

* Patrick Butler * Patricia Hughes * Alvar Lidell * Christopher Pemberton * Philip O'Connor

References

External links

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. * {{Portal bar, United Kingdom, BBC, Radio, Classical music, The arts, 1950s, 1960s BBC Radio 3 Defunct BBC national radio stations Radio stations established in 1946 Radio stations disestablished in 1967 1946 establishments in the United Kingdom 1967 disestablishments in the United Kingdom 1940s in the United Kingdom 1950s in the United Kingdom 1960s in the United Kingdom