Roger Wright has a slight speech impediment that, given his name and job, is a particular stroke of bad luck: "Hello, I'm Woger Wight fwom Wadio Thwee," is his usual introduction - though not without a knowing grin. The other immediately noticeable thing about Wright is that he is rather a clothes horse. On the day of our interview, he is wearing an impeccable dark suit, a crisp pink-and-white check shirt, a watch with a natty fuchsia strap, a pair of Chelsea boots and - the pièce de résistance - black socks embellished with pink, blue and green flowers.
This sock-loving, cricket-obsessed 50-year-old, controller of Radio 3 since 1998, has been the centre of a furore this week, as dark rumours circulated about his forthcoming schedule changes to Radio 3. There were cries of "vandal" as speculation spiralled that he was planning to introduce DJ-style programmes broadcasting excerpts, instead of complete concerts. Much of this Wright has quashed - the excerpts allegation in particular he brands "rubbish". Nonetheless, it is true that there will be less live music in the schedule from early next year.
The evening programme Performance on 3 will be moved from 7.30pm to 7pm, meaning fewer live broadcasts for the simple reason that concerts start at 7.30pm and not 7pm. But Wright says the move allows him to "buy back" half an hour in the evening schedule. This will be used partly to give Composer of the Week a more prominent slot, and partly to open up a space at 10.30pm for a new half-hour artist-based programme. The changes come in response to listeners who lamented that "there was no classical music on Radio 3 after 9.30pm". It also solves the interval problem: Twenty Minutes, a speech programme currently broadcast partway through live concerts, is terrific, says Wright - but because its timing is predicated on the shifting interval, "you never know when it's on".
All this seems perfectly logical, but won't listeners miss the sense of occasion that comes with a live broadcast? And does it not seem a quixotic decision, given that Radio 3 has tended proudly to brandish its support of live music? The crucial distinction, Wright says, is "between CDs and specially recorded performances". It matters little, he contends, whether a concert from the Usher Hall in Edinburgh is broadcast simultaneously or "as live", days, weeks or months later. In any case, he says, the network will still run live broadcasts from the Proms, special events and festivals. He also lets slip another change. To make up for the loss of Jazz Legends, its presenter, pianist Julian Joseph, will host a different jazz slot - the feeling being that Jazz Legends has run its course after five years.
One area in which Wright has brought Radio 3 indisputably into the limelight has been with his unapologetically completist special events, The Beethoven Experience and A Bach Christmas, in which everything ever written by the respective composers was broadcast, undiluted, over a period of several days. At the time of The Beethoven Experience, in June last year, there were an extraordinary 1.4 million downloads of the composer's symphonies over the two-week period in which they were made available, free, on Radio 3's website. It was a figure that surprised everyone, including the record companies, who rushed to digitise their catalogues in the face of hard evidence of the market for downloads.
But while the industry was grateful for the free research, it was not at all keen on Wright repeating the exercise, no doubt fearing that it would discourage people from spending money on recordings. Wright consulted with the industry before and after, and is respectful of their reservations - but, given the wild success of the experiment, is he not itching to hand out free downloads, a Father Christmas of the classical world?
He claims not: "The Beethoven symphonies were a pilot. We never had a plan to suddenly issue lots more, even though we have the rights to do it. The model of being able to stimulate interest, learn from it, and for the whole industry to benefit is a happy outcome. It isn't frustrating."
He says he wants to ring the changes, and not do the same thing all over again. Still, I can't help thinking his decision has less to do with innovation than a reluctance to disrupt the delicate ecosystem of the classical music world. And fear of repetition has not stopped Wright from planning other completist events: in February next year, Radio 3 will broadcast everything written by Tchaikovsky and Stravinsky, he reveals. This will not only give listeners a fresh sense of Tchaikovsky's output, much of which is barely heard; it will also make explicit the connections between two great Russian composers - one a great modernist, the other a great Romantic.
The Tchaikovsky-Stravinsky week (February 10-16) promises to be thrilling, but one can't help wondering what a station like Radio 3 is actually for, in a world of podcasts and audio streaming. "The reason radio is still so strong is because the medium matches our busy lives," Wright argues. "It is portable: you can have it in the house, the car, the office, on the computer, when you are walking around. The real-time experience of radio is still very important."
Radio 3's role, he says, is also to be a guide, an expert voice. "We want to take our audience further. The audience, or at least the majority of it, isn't asking us to broadcast Harrison Birtwistle. But is doing that something that we regard as being really important? Absolutely. Because we are not a museum; we don't just give people what they already know."
He emphasises that the network has a broad cultural role that goes beyond the two million or so people who regularly tune in. Of its £28m budget, £7m helps to support the five BBC orchestras and the BBC Singers, while a chunk is used to commission new works from composers. "A lot of that money passes through us and ends up going out into the creative community," Wright says.
It is largely because Radio 3 is deeply entwined in the cultural life of the nation that so much fuss is caused when tweaks to its schedule are threatened. Wright knows it. Of the week's storm of criticism, he says gamely: "I think it's great, I really do. It reminds you how much people care. To broadcast to an audience who didn't mind what you did - that wouldn't be anything like as much fun".
· Convinced? Do we need more live classical music on the radio? Tell us what you think about the changes at Radio 3 at blogs.theguardian.com/music
'What radio still does best, it does live', says Radio 3's competitors
Ed Baxter
Programmer, Resonance FM
Reports that the proposed schedule changes at Radio 3 will constitute the biggest upheaval in its history have been greeted with a sigh of indifference. Who cares about a handful of fringe programmes on a radio station that apparently represents a dwindling minority?
I do. Radio 3 is of national significance, and Roger Wright's comments point to much wider problems in both broadcasting and contemporary music. First, Wright is criticised for abandoning Radio 3's commitment to live music. What radio still does best, it does live. It has the advantage of surprise, the ability to lure an audience into accepting, and embracing, the unknown.
Secondly, Radio 3 is accused of abandoning its commitment to experimentation. For once, Friends of Radio 3, the lobby devoted to complaining about the destruction of their favourite station, would surely applaud Wright's decision to cut Late Junction from four weekly shows to three, and to axe Mixing It altogether. As outposts of musical postmodernism, these shows are seen by detractors as artistic anomalies, or worse, carbuncles on the face of a very old friend. As its entry programme to non-Enlightenment music new and old, Late Junction has reflected market developments in the wake of compact discs. The number of CD releases made such a show possible and inevitable. What now, though, when CD sales are falling and downloads abound?
Mixing It has proved far more radical than Late Junction. Witness the BBC Concert Orchestra's coy description of its current Composer in Residence, Johnny Greenwood, as "probably better known as the guitarist in the hugely successful band Radiohead". Probably. And probably too such a collaboration would have been inconceivable without Mixing It connecting savvy classical players and serious young pop stars.
Whatever the controller's whim, whatever the lobbyists' bugbear, whatever the apparent necessities of technology (almost always overstated to the detriment of content), one thing is certain: the audience has always already moved on. The idea of a radio station as a one-stop shop of experience is no longer sustainable.
Resonance FM, a community station devoted to the arts in London, is full of juxtapositions that assume a restless, open-minded audience. Just as the delete button is part of the accepted process for iPod users, so with Resonance the on/off switch has its place - the listener is not immobile in the face of a monolithic brand.
And we have an in-built device that forces new minority programming into our schedule. The Clear Spot, each weekday evening, hands over the station to anyone, for them to do anything they wish. If you don't like the radio that you hear (better still, if you do), then by all means come in and make your own. The airwaves are up for grabs. So grab them, listener. Grab them, Roger.
Darren Henley
Station manager, Classic FM
I have always struggled to understand the demand that Classic FM should become a mirror-image of Radio 3. Equally, there would be no logic in the BBC's new board of trustees allowing the station to turn into a pale imitation of Classic FM. Radio 3 enjoys the luxurious comfort blanket of being funded by the licence fee, with a further sum going to the BBC's orchestras. The BBC's annual report shows that this figure of £31m excludes a plethora of other costs such as marketing, on-air trails and libraries. No commercial radio station would be economically viable with a budget running at this level. So the trustees have a responsibility to licence-payers to ensure that Radio 3 makes use of its cash to create content that is unavailable on commercial radio.
Radio 3 super-serves an audience of classical music connoisseurs. It does this job with great aplomb, and were it to disappear from our radio dials, the classical music world would be a far poorer place. But since our launch in 1992, we have proved that there is room for a radio station that creates programmes for everyone else - that great mass of classical music lovers who do not profess to be part of the artistic elite, but who none the less enjoy listening to the greatest music ever written.
There are encouraging signs that Radio 3 will continue to offer a service that is different from Classic FM. We will continue to broadcast for children, request programmes, and a film soundtrack programme - all areas downgraded in Radio 3's new schedule. We are also committed to increasing the number of live broadcasts.
The jazz community has received the assurance only that "a certain amount of jazz" will remain on Radio 3. They have nothing to fear - we will be launching a new jazz network before the end of the year.