Quite simply the worst cultural news I have read since pre-Feb 19th. A disaster waiting to happen.

Is it significant that although I subscribe to all the BBC's news feeds related to "music", I hadn't seen this until now? 

Does anybody else remember a "Piano Moving at the Proms" sketch? I think it was by the Two Ronnies (performed by R.Barker)

Except there was a time when the announcers could be relied upon to comment in an urbane and intelligent way on the music during the breaks between pieces - without having interviewettes with performers, or telling us every 15 seconds that this was "live", or giving us their opinions, or giving us their carefully-prepared "spontaneous" quotations at the end of a piece, or just generally gushing ......

I heard the news on Radio 2. What a disaster this will be for the Proms. I returned to the BBC Press Office and found this:

"Groundbreaking initiatives such as A Bach Christmas (December 2005) - when the schedules were cleared to broadcast the entire works of Bach continuously over 10 days - have been a feature of Roger's tenure."

Hello? This was not a "groundbreaking" initiative, it was a "no live music" initiative.

It's like making Pol Pot editor of The Grauniad.

Something has happened to her, and like the honchos in general my hunch is that a Blairite apparactchik is
Prodnose-like under each of their desks -the feeling that the Charter will only be renewed if a Blairite revolution
ignoring the grass roots is the feel of the order of the day.

And the 2008 Proms too - the level of solo performer who appears in The Proms usually has a full diary 2-3 years ahead, and orchestras even more so.

I doubt RW has much to bring to the party.  His "achievements" at R3 have consisted of "repackaging exercises", treating music as a job-lot commodity which can be stacked wall-to-wall in absurd projects like the "Bach Christmas", "Ring-In-A-Day", and the "Tchaikovsky-With-Stravinsky-Ignored" fiasco.  They could be compared to Tesco deciding to sell only Tomato Ketchup for a 3-day promotional period,  and clearing the shelves of everything else to make way for it.  If that's the shape of his Proms season, few people's breath will be bated - gimmicks, and nothing but.

That might, of course, be good or bad. Knowing RW's prediliction for popularism, it might mean more 'Last Night Fever' suffused into the rest of the Festival.  That, of course, would chime very nicely with his paymasters, who seem to be on some kind of tub-thumping quasi-patriotic agenda currently..I'm sure it plays well for Downing Street.

I somehow found myself jittering when typing 'Festival' above...is The Proms really a 'Festival'?  To me, a Festival should be one-off, unrepeatable goodies which you either get to or curse your rotten luck.  There shouldn't be any Meat + Two Veg in a Festival, it ought to be a riot of exotic seafood, fresh asparagus and outrageous desserts..nothing humdrum at all. And lots of new commissions!!