Perhaps Service was just trying to avoid another walk-out, which more aggressive questioning might have resulted in. At least we'll be able to see the Aida booing on DVD and make up our own minds.

I seem to remember that the only aristocrat connected with "Koanga" is the African Prince himself.  Surely, the nearest Delius came to a position of importance or distinction was as Manager of an orange plantation in Florida..

Another issue was raised on another MM and the was Lebrecht.

You may not like the man Lebrecht, and I can feel the rage already rising, BUT NL may well be raising a serious issue about what not only he sees as the imminent demise of the classical music industry but a number of others. Lebrecht may have a number of things you dislike, including apparently the very sound of his voice, his language, his bombast, his apparently cavalier attitude with fact. OK, but there is a kind of underpinning thesis.

The R3 mb's and elsewhere are stacked full of jeremiads about the beginning of the end of a viable classical music / serious arts industry as expressed in and through the current R3 strategy. They too seem to be saying that we are watching the accelerating end of the classical music / serious arts radio industry as we have known it.

The reforms of R3 with the abolition of live music is in many ways an even more significant sign of the establishment desire to control and re-direct taste and habit into a more conveniently packageable and thus commercially profitable direction. Once the classical music industry moguls lose control of the means of production and distribution of music to their potential audience - as is happening to the rock industry- their own power is first questioned and then broken. iPod, downloads have scared the pants off the recording industry for exactly this reason.

Similarly, the recent changes to R3: the recorded 'as live' concept as a substitute for real 'live', the cutting off of debate and then organising interactivity only on its own prescribed model are attempts to assert control over an audience it fears it is losing, to make that audience conform to the pattern of behaviour it needs to instil to retain that audience share, and thus commercial credibility in terms of Licence Fee. If politicians can prove that the BBC is failing to respond to audience tastes in a particular area, then it will lose the cultural high ground and hence some of the licence fee argument. So the next thing is to control that taste, foster the fiction of consultation, responsiveness and interactivity whilst operating a policy solely designed to maintain itself commercially, even if it means reneging on its remit to enlighten, educate, encourage and entertain its audience.

The apparent contradiction between on the one hand consultation of audience through endless appeals to interact, but on the other a ruthless dictation of audience listening patterns seems not to have occurred to the BBC. It has to posters on these mb's. I think in a way, Lebrecht is drawing attention to this anomaly. The BBC and classical music industry need only look at the current state of the rock music industry: technology has put into the hands of the punters the means by which the whole industry could be subverted, or rather re-ordered beyond the traditional moguls' reach. So in ten years' time or maybe less, a whole generation will have grown up searching out the music IT wants to hear and not what the companies want to provide. The BBC's refusal to listen to what the audiences are telling them about what they want, and to continue to be a central support for the serious music industry are distinctly ominous and one is curious as to why there has not been more of a cry of anguish from the various orchestras etc. Maybe they are just grateful for the exposure in any format, glad of recording fees / repeat fees, so simply shut up and wince, while the BBC thus has them over a barrel?

But the actual notion of 'an audience' is interesting; an audience is a community of the like-minded. They come together through education, jointly shared pleasures. That audience works by word of mouth / written message etc as well as being drawn by shared devotion for an art form. If there is no word of mouth, or an organisation ceases to provide a forum for that art form, then the community either does not form or forms so slowly as to remain powerless. If an organisation seeks to break down that community ( as R3 has on mb's and through killing the cohering alchemy of 'live' broadcasting ), then the 'audience' becomes simply individuals ('There is no such thing as society'? ), feels less loyalty to each other or the organisation / art form which called it into being. If moreover classical music is excised from the education of the nation - and we are rapipdly approaching that point to all intents and purpsoes - then classical music might become the pursuit ONLY of those of an older generation and will thus die with that generation. Very gradually, but as it becomes more and more expensive to feed a dwindling market, fewer ensembles / companies / broadcasting organisations will attempt it. Yes, I know Naxos et al are proving a different truth at the moment, but will that continue to be the case ten years or so down the line if the education base which feeds the Naxos buyer's curiosity is undermined by educational neglect and marginalisation? After all, that is effectively what R3 has currently done to live concert broadcasting. I hope people do not wake up to late to realise the huge significance of this shift in policy.

Slice and slice and slice until all you have left is crumbs.