Radio 3 offers a mix of music and cultural programming in order to engage and entertain its audience. Around its core proposition of classical music, its speech-based programming seeks to inform and educate the audience about music and culture. Jazz, world music, drama, the arts and ideas, and religious programming also feature in its output.

The service aims to appeal to listeners of any age seeking to expand their cultural horizons through engagement with the world of music and the arts.

Radio 3 will continue to place a special emphasis on live and specially recorded music. It will enrich the cultural life of the UK by reflecting its music and arts agenda. It will commission new work and performances from composers, musicians and writers, and draw on the best talent from across the world to create its wide-ranging portfolio of programmes.

This year Radio 3's priorities are:

Priority	Rationale
Strengthen coverage of the international music scene in daytime programming; it will represent the world's major performers and festivals with at least 100 concerts or opera performances of foreign origin.	Radio 3 is responding to the international nature of the musical scene with more regular coverage of music outside the UK.
Provide listeners with a new appointment for the appreciation of poetry, interleaved with a sequence of complementary music.	The new non-presented programme will expand the station's poetry coverage beyond what is currently available in The Verb.
Increase the presence of musical recommendations on air and in interactive media, enhancing our role as a guide to the musical genres in our schedule.	This emphasis within programmes is aimed at providing entry points to less experienced listeners, while fostering debate among the more knowledgeable.
Broadcast programming to complement the Radio 4 historical introduction to classical music in 60 programmes.	This series will provide an entry point for listeners, providing context and stimulus for their further exploration of classical music.

Stimulating creativity and cultural excellence
Radio 3 is committed to presenting music from across the UK from a broad range of venues and festivals, including every programme in the BBC Proms. We use the BBC performing groups and collaborate with a wide range of external organisations to make performances available to listeners. Speech, drama and commissioned writing are a vital component of the programme mix.

We will stimulate and celebrate creativity specifically through our involvement in the Royal Philharmonic Society Awards, the British Composer Awards and the Radio 3 Awards for World Music. Building on our exploration of British music during 2006, we will mark the Edward Elgar anniversary, extensively presenting his music and cultural context.

This year we will:

• Ensure that 50% of the station's music output consists of live or specially recorded music.
• Broadcast at least 500 live or specially recorded performances.
• Commission at least 30 new musical works.
• Contribute to BBC Radio's commitment to commission at least 10% of eligible programmes from independent producers.

Promoting education and learning
We aim to give context to our music output, both in our presentation and in supporting content for our website. We will support new and emerging artists through the New Generation Artists scheme.

The new emphasis on recommendation seeks to stimulate interest and debate across Radio 3 musical genres. We will develop our new programme Jazz Library as a counterpart to the long-established classical feature Building a Library.

This year we will:

• Commission at least 30 documentaries on arts and cultural topics.

Representing the UK's nations, regions and communities
The BBC's orchestras and the BBC Singers bring live orchestral and choral music to a wide range of venues. Our regular coverage of musical performance and the arts reflects creativity from across the UK.

In particular this year we will reflect the anniversary of the abolition of the transatlantic slave trade in Radio 3 broadcasts.

For 2007/2008 we will:

• Ensure that 40% of relevant spend (5) is incurred outside the M25 area.
  

Bringing the UK to the world and the world to the UK
Radio 3 presents its listeners with music and the arts extending beyond national boundaries. We work actively with partner broadcasters to present highlights of musical life from outside the UK. We will continue to develop our international coverage to strengthen the representation of major performances, in particular opera broadcasts.

Sustaining citizenship and civil society
We will address contemporary issues in programmes such as Night Waves and Music Matters, debating issues from a cultural perspective, offering a variety of opinions, and encouraging our listeners to come to their own conclusions.

We will again organise Free Thinking, a weekend of speech events based around major issues facing society, and involving the public both in the Liverpool-based festival and through a high degree of interactivity on air and online.

Emerging communications
In addition to analogue broadcasting, Radio 3 is available on DAB and via digital television, and is streamed on the internet. Some programmes are available on demand after broadcast, extending the life of the programmes by making them accessible to listeners for whom a linear schedule is not convenient. This year we will improve our digital service by offering greater consistency of text information on digital platforms and by implementing a streamlined online process for dealing with listener queries and requests.

This includes expenditure on first-run originated programming and Radio 3's allocation of the central orchestras' subsidy, but does not include expenditure on news or sport output.

Reach: Radio 3 should contribute towards the maintenance of combined BBC weekly reach for all BBC services at over 90% by aiming to maintain its own weekly reach.

Quality: Audience approval of Radio 3 and perceptions of it as high quality and innovative. Also, the proportion of originated programmes across all hours (including repeats).

Impact: Audience perceptions of Radio 3 as engaging and challenging.

Value for money: Radio 3's cost per listener hour.