BBC Radio 3 is a British radio station operated by the BBC. Its output centers on classical music and opera, but jazz, world music, drama, culture, and the arts also feature.
The station describes itself as 'the world's most significant commissioner of new music', and through its New Generation Artists scheme promotes young musicians of all nationalities. The station broadcasts the BBC Proms concerts, live and in full, each summer in addition to performances by the BBC Orchestras and Singers. There are regular productions of both classic plays and newly commissioned drama.
Radio 3 won the Sony Radio Academy UK Station of the Year Gold Award for 2009 and was nominated again in 2011.
Radio 3 is the successor station to the BBC Third Programme which began broadcasting on 29 September 1946. The name Radio 3 was adopted on 30 September 1967 when the BBC launched its first pop music station, Radio 1:247 and rebranded its national radio channels as Radio 1, Radio 2 (formerly the Light Programme), Radio 3, and Radio 4 (formerly the Home Service).
Radio 3 was the overall label applied to the collection of services which had until then gone under the umbrella title of the Third Network, namely:
- The Third Programme proper (as launched in 1946, an evenings-only offering of demanding cultural fare, both musical and spoken)
- The Music Programme (a daytime service of classical music)
- sports coverage (chiefly on Saturday afternoons) and adult educational programming in the early part of weekday evenings (known as Network Three).
All these strands, including the Third Programme, kept their separate identities within Radio 3 until 4 April 1970, when there was a further reorganization following the introduction of the structural changes which had been outlined the previous year in the BBC document Broadcasting in the Seventies.