BBC Radio 3 Controller "only just getting started" as he refutes 'dumbing down' accusations
Sam Jackson outlines his vision for a "modern iteration" of the station.
This article first appeared in Radio Times magazine.
Sam Jackson took over as Radio 3 controller in April 2023. A year later he introduced changes that, for some, confirmed their doubts about the previous head of Classic FM. Jools Holland was given a Saturday lunchtime slot and Radio 2's middle-brow Friday Night Is Music Night was revived for the station. Jackson was the great dumber down, critics said. It was a charge that, when we last spoke in April, still angered him. "It’s a ludicrous phrase," he said then. "An insult." Besides, the snobbery aimed at him missed the point; Radio 3 had below two million weekly listeners and was heading only one way – down.
Eighteen months and a hugely successful Proms season later, Jackson sits in his Broadcasting House office a vindicated man. New Rajar figures show the station’s audience is back above two million and Holland’s show is a post-pandemic record for the hour it inhabits. And dumbed down? "You’d be unlikely to hear Charles Ives at four o’clock in the afternoon on other stations," says Jackson of the American modernist composer. "Or have the 40-part series on modernism as we have next year."
Moreover, listener figures at his old station – ruthlessly commercial Classic FM – are faltering. He must feel like shouting, "I told you so." "You have to stay humble," he says. "Radio is the most intimate medium. It accompanies you in the bath or the shower. When somebody like me changes that, the instinctive reaction is, 'What have you done? I like it how it is.' Of course, everybody forgets that the thing that’s currently there wasn’t there for ever. It’s less, 'I told you so' and more, 'I thought we'd get to this point.'"
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The figures are "brilliant", but what really cheers Jackson is Radio 3 reporting the highest average listening hours in its history. He wants us to spend as much of our time as possible with his station and, if our stressed-out lives make that tricky, then he'll supply a space on BBC Sounds to help out. The newly launched Radio 3 Unwind is a 24-hours-a-day music stream that, we're told, will "promote focus, help listeners unwind, de-stress and find escapism, guided by expert presenters".
Those will include Dr Sian Williams. "She’s a registered psychologist working in the NHS around mental health trauma and has incredible knowledge," says Jackson. "Unwind will be something that really looks in a very Reithian way at how you enable people to learn about the whole notion of unwinding, protecting and preserving your mental wellbeing."
Would founding father of the BBC Lord Reith really want to centre our chakras – where does it fit with the old mission to inform, educate and entertain? "This is a modern iteration of what it means to be the BBC," Jackson says. "Informing people about how to look after themselves, how to use music to aid their mental wellbeing, at a time when life has never been busier, when we are all tied to our screens."
But isn’t great music art, rather than a mood- enhancing adjunct to yoga and herbal tea? "Radio 3 Unwind is a core classical music station," he says. "You will hear, far above anything else, classical music, both historic and new. It will back British composers and artists and shine a light on an underperformed, underrepresented repertoire."
Buoyed by the Rajar figures, Jackson has the bright demeanour of a man who expects to succeed. "I have a very clear sense of where I want to take Radio 3. There are lots more exciting things we could do, both at Radio 3 and the Proms, to cement classical music’s position within the cultural life of this country, and I feel like we’ve only just got started."
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