Roger Wright

[Billy Agostini]

What a pleasure it was to listen to this week’s interview with Mr. Wright on Feedback. Rarely has a radio controller come under such constant and vitriolic attack, yet Mr. Wright stays calm and, above all, is always ready to listen. It was clear after the recent Rajar figures that the amplitude of these attacks was bound to increase.

Mr Wright could – as other controllers have done in the past – simply have told Feedback that he wasn’t available for interview, yet he didn’t. The majority of radio controllers stage manage their appearances on the programme – with all the ‘difficult’ questions removed. Not a bit of it with Mr. Wright.

I don’t think causality is an appropriate word when considering the decline in R3 audiences and I’m certainly grateful to Mr. Wright for making the station far more accessible to people with catholic music tastes.

[Crusoe]

I am always very impressed by Roger Wright’s appearances on “Feedback”. He seems to be a very likeable interviewee and manages to accept that listeners are sometimes right without giving in to the most vocal complainers.

It seems to me that Radio 3 is probably the best of the BBC’s national radio stations and is the best example of “Public Service Broadcasting”, in that it provides what is not available elsewhere. The mix of music is diverse and almost always interesting and the documentaries and plays are generally thought-provoking. Radio 1 and Radio 2, on the other hand are very similar to commercial stations, Five Live is a sort of mix of Talk Sport, Radio 4 and local radio (without the local interest) and Radio 4, although it does provide programming not available elsewhere is too tied to a certain section of the listenership.

I hope that Mr Wright is allowed to continue in his job for many years to come.