Opinion – The BBC needs to save £500m. Classical music is not exempt.

I write a lot about the BBC and classical music whether it be the BBC Proms or Radio 3. That’s a reflection of the BBC’s role in the classical music industry. It amplifies, endorses, and enables. It’s the Proms commissioning a piece no concert promoter would risk; it’s Radio 3 giving a regional orchestra’s Tuesday night a national audience it would never otherwise reach; it’s a New Generation Artist getting a first broadcast before anyone outside the profession had heard their name. Many bemoan the public service broadcaster not doing enough of those things, mourning the passing of a golden age.

That pattern of bemoaning change has been ramped up in recent years since the arrival of Sam Jackson, the BBC’s Controller of Radio 3 and Director of the BBC Proms. Schedule changes to Radio 3 have caused the Old Guard plenty of migraines. No preempting on the part of Radio 3’s management is going to avoid the inevitable.

If the BBC can announce further cuts to journalism, then nothing is protected. The Corporation’s most recent announcement has landed with quite the thud. Shedding The World Tonight and the sacrosanct Midnight News bulletin might as well have sent Radio 4 into closedown from after the evening episode of The Archers. If sacred cows like those can be exchanged for a simulcast with the World Service, then what next for the recently scalped, shaped and pimped Radio 3?

Whilst the cutting of 700 corporate jobs and 550 across News, Content and Nations is said to save £160m, the high profile broadcasts like the Midnight News bulletin — effectively a continuity announcer reading out a script written by multiple producers throughout the day — is nothing more than a sacrificial cow to demonstrate statement of intent.

It’s difficult to see how an organisation looking to save a total of £500m which has already put Doctor Who out to tender rather than retain Russell T Davies and Bad Wolf — won’t have its sights set on other radio networks that don’t necessarily return on investment. The BBC has made clear it’s looking at other TV and radio networks and programmes stating there will be ‘a review of broadcast TV channels and radio network portfolio as audiences move online’. When it’s stating intent in a press release to commit ‘to sustain output with the highest audience value and impact’ then it feels like a stretch to justify the likes of Radio 3 or the current length of the Proms.

The industry fought hard for the BBC Singers. The BBC has invested in shifting its London-based performing groups to a new (still unfinished) home in East London. Something has to give. Has the decision been made already?

The BBC is unlikely to announce a cut to a network (or “the world’s greatest classical music festival”) before the Proms season begins this year, nor before the 100th season of the BBC owning it next year. They wouldn’t make the same mistake twice. Surely not.