The long-awaited ╥third programme╙ of the B.B.C. is to start on Sunday, September 29, and will thereafter be transmitted every evening from six o╒clock until midnight. It will go out on 203.5 metres for listeners in London, Manchester, and nineteen areas other than the Central Midlands. Listeners in the Central Midlands will get their transmission on 514.6 metres.
╥The third programme of the B.B.C. will do something no broadcasting system has ever attempted before and it is unlikely any other will do for years to come,╙ said a B.B.C. spokesman yesterday. ╥It will be unique in freedom from routine and in acceptance of artistic responsibility.╙ No news bulletins or fixed periods are to cramp the opportunities of the third programme. Plays, operas, and concerts will be given in their entirety.
Music will fill at least one-third of the weekly programme. Every week it is hoped to provide a full-length opera broadcast, symphony concerts will normally be heard on Thursdays and Saturdays, a concert of chamber music each Monday, and recitals and record programmes throughout the week.
Drama and features will alternate on Tuesdays and be repeated on the following day. Poetry will be heard three times a week and usually at a peak listening hour, not near midnight. Talks will include subjects of current interest by authoritative speakers and there is to be an interesting innovation ╤ a radio critic will criticise the ╥third programme╙ productions.
The programmes are for selective, not continuous, listening and when the complete five-and-a-half-hour ╥Tristan and Isolde╙ conducted by Sir Thomas Beecham, is heard on October 24 he will cater in the intervals for those who do not like Wagner. There will be few ╥hearing aids╙ or ╥crutches╙ for listeners to the third programme. ╥We are going to provide the programme, not the programme note,╙ said Mr. Barnes.
