The Envy of the World. - book reviews

Contemporary Review, March, 1997 by Tom Phillips

A radio network happy to broadcast deliberate moments of silence must surely be a confident one. In its early days the BBC's Third Programme sometimes went for three minutes without a word uttered or a note played and even now its direct descendent, Radio Three, is not afraid of 'dead air'. When other stations maintain a barrage of easily digestible music and speech, the pauses characteristic of Radio Three suggest a serene and stable network free from competitiveness and paranoia. Inevitably Humphrey Carpenter's history of what began fifty years ago as 'the prime re-educative agency of the post-war world' reveals a less comfortable state of affairs.

Like all the BBC networks, Radio Three has endured a painful 'identity crisis'. Recent debate about the Corporation's charter has highlighted its anguished process of self-justification but Mr Carpenter argues that the current Birtian regime of analysts and accountants is no more hostile to Radio Three than those which questioned its function in the past. There never has been a 'golden age' for the Third, he says and for years policy-makers and producers have fought over the expenditure of millions of pounds on a radio network which only a minute fraction of the population uses. Since The Envy of The World is an 'inside job' - written to mark the network's fiftieth anniversary on the request of its Controller - it is not surprising that it contains what is in effect an apology for contemporary priorities.

Certainly the Third has always had challenges to face. Within days of its launch interference from a Soviet station caused chaos and six months later the 1947 fuel crisis nearly closed it down for good. The budget has never been secure and its Controllers have had to tread a narrow path between management demands for ratings and audience demands for more intellectual programmes. Sometimes, of course, the management does get it wrong. Mr. Carpenter admits that the short-lived appearance of Paul Gambaccini's syrupy Morning Collection in a bid to lure new audiences was an embarrassment to all concerned but the official line remains the same: this cultural wing of public service broadcasting is as safe as it's ever been.

Despite this assertion The Envy Of The World is still a story of decline. Nothing can disguise the early burst of creativity and experiment which led to such ambitious projects as a five-hour live performance of Shaw's Man and Superman or the monumental though troubled series, A History In Sound Of European Music. Away from the microphone, staff appear to have been perpetually over-excited about the new ground they were breaking. In comparison, the personnel Mr Carpenter describes in his final 'Day In The Life' of Radio Three, in 1996, are working under too much pressure to worry about innovation.

Radio Three is now dominated by serious music from the pre-classical onwards: in the days before its drama output was bequeathed to Radio Four, it was vital to the Third's distinctive achievement. Under Milk Wood is probably its most famous single broadcast and, even though editors 'missed' key works like Waiting For Godot, the network clearly helped establish writers like Beckett, Pinter and Stoppard and it is only to be lamented that Radio Three has lost this commitment to the spoken word.

In its historian, then, Radio Three has been given a fluent apologist and, to some extent, the author is right to counter nostalgic myths which obscure an 'elitist' past. Whilst allegedly encouraging new composers, for instance, the network could be unnecessarily obstructive and Elisabeth Lutyens, amongst others, was treated with disdain by the Music Reading Panel while the works of more favoured names were broadcast without being submitted for laborious assessment. However, in trying to view the past realistically, Humphrey Carpenter presents the present too rosily and his understated comments about the BBC's internal market initiative, Producer Choice, don't reflect the dismay which it generated throughout the Corporation. It is a pity that he has allowed this thoroughly researched book to slip out of focus when it comes to issues of current debate.

The survival of cultural institutions like Radio Three is also a concern of the academics whose essays on standards in broadcasting are collected in Culture First! Based on papers delivered to a 1994 media conference in Frankfurt, the book is a response to the increasing fragmentation of the industry and a sustained critique - in a Kantian sense - of the moral relativism found in most post-modernist cultural studies.

Suggesting that the blurting of entertainment and information as 'infotainment' will literally demoralise the audience, Culture First! is at its strongest when questioning the assumption that new technology - interactive television, the Internet, digital broadcasting - and commercial mass production will necessarily lead to more choice and more freedom. Being overloaded with 'infotainment' is not the same as being allowed to develop the kind of knowledge we need to lead active, fulfilling lives. Against a vision of a society divided between amoral 'couch potatoes' and media literate elites, Kenneth Dyson in particular argues for a return to normative standards. Only by elevating aesthetic and ethical values - founded in literary Romanticism - above economic and political criteria can we resist the seduction of technology and the arid impersonal culture it tends to generate.