Changing of the old guard
As it approaches its 10th birthday with 360,000 new listeners and a 23% hike in revenues, Classic FM can afford to be confident - but confident enough to hire Simon Bates? Apparently so. Matt Wells meets the station's boss Roger Lewis, who has a message to impart and a flock to convert
Mon 5 Aug 2002 01.36 BST
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Classic FM is not exactly the coolest radio station in Britain. And with the signing of Simon Bates as its new star presenter, you get the feeling that it doesn't really care.
But with record audiences that now outstrip Radio 1, Kiss and Virgin in London, and revenue up 23%, the station can be afford to be bullish as it approaches its 10th anniversary next month. The cultural snobs who turned up their noses at its unashamedly populist approach have been proved wrong: Classic FM is a British success story, a station that identified a gap in the market and gives its listeners what they want.
But it is not without a cost. Radio 3's attempts at a response - first by emulating the presentational style then latterly by diversifying into other forms of minority-interest music - have led to declining audiences. The harshest critics say Classic FM has been single-handedly responsible for the death of a serious approach to classical music on the radio. It is a charge that is dismissed by the station boss Roger Lewis, who points to Classic FM's soaring audiences - up 360,000 on the year to 6.7m, although slightly down on the quarter.
"At the heart of Classic FM's exponential audience growth is our ambition to make classical music truly inclusive, not exclusive. It is an ambition to create entry points for as many people as possible, who want to experience and enjoy classical music. Before Classic FM went on air in 1992 the doors were closed, there were barriers in place which did not allow or enable a broad-based mass audience to experience the art form.
"The occasional brickbat we receive doesn't come from our audience, it comes from perhaps one of a small band of critics who feel possibly threatened by what Classic FM has achieved. We have questioned the old guard, the old ways, we have questioned the negative aspects of elitism surrounding classical music. It is a protectionist stance adopted by some misguided people who work within the genre."
In print, these words appear bombastic and harsh. But they are delivered with a smile in Lewis's characteristically careful, understated style: his soft, south Wales accent takes the edge off his barbs, so that he almost seems pitying, rather than critical.
But those who know Lewis, know otherwise. The friendly, fatherly exterior masks a determined man, who has attacked his job with a zeal from which even the most experienced missionaries could learn a thing or two.
Lewis holds the dual role of managing director and programme controller, and also has a seat on the board of parent company GWR: so the inherent tensions that inhabit most commercial broadcasters are non-existent. He is directly accountable to the shareholders for the commercial consequences of his creative decisions.
He talks of his station as a "family", and is effusive in his praise for his staff. But you get the impression that he is not one to tolerate slackers, that he would not back off from wielding the axe if a presenter wasn't performing well enough. And the end would be swift, emotionless and without warning. One presenter says: "At the moment, everything's fine and Roger is great. But if anything were not fine, you probably wouldn't know it until the very last moment."
So it is just as well that Lewis is a populist at heart. To illustrate his approach to music, he picks out a quote from another new signing, Stephen Fry, which he keeps filed away in his desk. Fry eulogises about a production of Mozart's Don Giovanni that he saw with his parents when he was 12: "I suddenly began to see what it was all about - why music mattered, why drama mattered, why art mattered. These moments of epiphany connect you to art and show you that it does not belong to others, to some nameless elite of bohemians, producers, well-born patrons and critics. Art is there for me. Velazquez speaks to me, Shakespeare speaks to me, they all speak to me, unfiltered by academics, snobs, experts or the weight of their reputation."
Lewis regards this as something of a mission statement: "That encapsulates for me the attitude of Classic FM - that classical music is of the people. At the heart of what we do here at Classic FM is to make this music of the people. Everything we do on air and off air is all about trying to create an inclusive culture around classical music. The music has stood the test of time, it has enduring qualities. It is a music that operates on so many levels - spiritual, emotional, intellectual - and what we are trying to do is take our audience on a journey that will enable them to experience the breadth and depth of the repertoire and the extraordinary kaleidoscope of emotions, feelings and thoughts that the music conjures up."
Lewis's populist streak runs through his career. He signed Vanessa Mae when he was an executive at EMI, and has now signed up another promising young musician, Lisa Duncombe, 22, to present her own show on Classic FM. (Duncombe attracted much comment last week when it was revealed that she landed her job after she wrote to Lewis with her ideas for attracting younger listeners.) ITV newscaster Katie Derham has also been hired, so the totty count at Classic FM is growing. But Lewis insists these are serious signings. "This is not about packaging and things superficial. Katie Derham is an economics graduate of Cambridge who is passionate about classical music - she still plays the violin. She is also a very experienced broadcaster."
There appears to be a dual purpose to his substantial repositioning of the schedules. Bates will present the drivetime programme, providing what Lewis hopes will be a heavyweight bookend to a daytime schedule that starts with Henry Kelly at breakfast. as big-name signings, Derham and Fry will also bolster the crucial daytime audiences, though at weekends.
But Lewis believes that the station's overall strength now gives him the opportunity to experiment at the edges of the schedule, trying out a few things that may assuage the critics. There will be more "full works" in the evenings; Duncombe will have a brief to showcase new musical talent in her Friday and Saturday night show, while a new programme, the Chiller Cabinet, will explore the crossover between classical and "chill-out" dance music of the sort pioneered by William Orbit. "My focus has been on Classic FM, and creating the national classical music station. What we are trying to do going forward is to be more than that," says Lewis. "Classical music has been sampled on the dancefloor. It's now our turn to reflect this on air."
It becomes clear, after speaking to Lewis for more than a few minutes, that he sees a higher purpose to his job than simply running a radio station. It's almost as if there is a bigger message to impart, a flock to convert. His conversation is peppered with words such as dream, belief, and vision. He seems to see it as his life's work to convert the nation to the joys of popular classical music. (And then sell them the CD, the magazine, and the Saga holidays.)
"The everlasting qualities that surround classical music have the power we believe to change people's perceptions of the surrounding world for the greater good. It's ultimately a civilising influence and that's why we are so passionate about what we do and about wanting to share this music with a broad-based mass audience," he says.
Lewis for the Nobel Peace Prize? Probably not. But controller of Radio 2? Maybe. With the announcement that Jim Moir is to retire next year, the spotlight is on Lewis as a possible successor. It would be a natural progression - Classic FM is Britain's most popular commercial station, though it is still behind Radio 2, the overall number one. But axes at the BBC are already grinding: memories are long. He was in the running for the controller of Radio 3 at the same time as he was tipped for the Classic FM job four years ago. Cheekily, Classic FM announced his appointment on the same day that Roger Wright was named controller of Radio 3. Lewis later said he had turned down the Radio 3 job, but the BBC vehemently denied that he had ever been offered it. Lewis was careful not to rule anything out, saying only: "Jim Moir's shoes are big ones to fill, his suit is even bigger. My focus is completely on Classic FM and what we can do next with the radio station."