BBC RADIO 3 COMMISSIONING BRIEF
Programme Title: Sunday Feature
Time: 1945 – 2030
Commissioning period: April 2012 – April 2013
Estimated no. of programmes available: 34
Duration: 44’ including recorded programme and presentation announcements
Guide Price: Two categories: a) up to £8,500 b) up to £10,000
Commissioning Editor: Matthew Dodd
RAP Commissioning Brief Reference No: 31234
EDITORIAL GUIDE
The Sunday Feature is the home of flagship documentaries reflecting the breadth of
Radio 3’s arts and culture agenda. Artists and thinkers from the contemporary to the
ancient are celebrated, dissected, re-appraised and brought-to-life.
The Sunday Feature aspires to be a showcase for the highest standards of featuremaking. At nearly three quarters of an hour, these are in-depth programmes
characterised by distinctive cultural narrative and analysis. Painters, archeologists,
film-makers, novelists, philosophers, psychologists and many more all make
appearances here.
In a new earlier Sunday evening slot in the Radio 3 schedule, the programmes here
should be real appointments to listen – a chance for the audience to be taken on a
journey through memorable landscapes, issues and people.
The presenters of the Sunday Feature are established cultural figures and
broadcasters, and they can also be voices new to Radio 3. But they always bring
authority, passion, and distinctive points of view and wit.
What we’re looking for:

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Cultural journalism – the Sunday Feature is a means to explore key issues of
the moment in a longer form – so Hilary Finch analysed the state of music
criticism in To Listen Well and Judith Mackrell looked at the future of
choreography in A Movement Beyond Dance.
Some of the most distinctive of recent features have put contemporary cultural
issues into an historical context eg. Michael Goldfarb compared artistic
response to the current financial crisis with that of the 1930s, in Europe – The
Art of Austerity.

Profiles of significant contemporary cultural figures where the feature format
clearly offers listeners an alternative to extended studio interviews found in
Night Waves.

Global culture – explored with insight and introduce us to lesser-known but
influential people and movements around the world. Recently Zeinab Badawi
reported from theatre’s use in conflict resolution in Sudan, and Petroc
Trelawny visited Detroit’s strike-ridden Symphony Orchestra.

Cultural biography. Programmes that put the case for re-appraising the life and
work of significant individuals or groups of people from the recent and distant
past. Excellent examples of this include the story of controversial
psychotherapist Wilhelm Reich or a reassessment of the life and work of
sculptor Barbara Hepworth.

The history of ideas and culture around the UK.

One-off, virtuoso features about a person, a place, or a work of art – with
good reason to be visited or revisited.

Strong series ideas, which will act as stand out moments on Radio 3. These
will probably 2 - 4 programmes and will usually mean one presenter across the
whole series although different presenters bringing personal perspectives to a
single theme might also be considered. Good recent examples are Tristram
Hunt’s series Great British Ideas or our 4-part The American Civil War
Your programme needs to entertain and enlighten the audience – but not be glib.
The target audience for this strand has an active interest in music, arts, ideas and
cultural history but not necessarily an in-depth knowledge of subjects covered in this
strand.
What is original about your programme idea? We’ll be looking to see what makes a
feature distinctive, whether the presenter has a particular expertise, passion or point
of view, and how the feature offers new insights into a subject.
Please give us an indication of your treatment as well as an outline of your subject
and its significance. However, you don’t need to give us long lists of academic
contributors to show your research.
We need some lighter proposals but it is important that your offers demonstrate they
can sustain this longer-form feature. A recent example of a light and fascinating
feature full of information was The Pleasure Telephone.
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We are also happy to receive offers which link to key events in the arts and cultural
diary for the commissioning period – exhibitions, anniversaries, openings of major
new international institutions or similar. However, please remember that Night Waves
covers all major arts events, and so proposals directly related to the arts diary of the
coming year need to offer a distinctive treatment.
We do look for features with a musical focus - but they must be distinct from other
music strands on the network and be documentary, rather than performance-based.
Please indicate whether or not the proposed presenter has been involved in the
development of the idea (they do not have to have been) and why you believe they
would be appropriate. Occasionally we will consider features that are built as a
montage without a presenter but will need the offer to demonstrate how the feature
would be structured.
The proposal should also include brief details of the producer’s experience if they
have not recently worked for the station.
Related Programming
The Sunday Feature is one of the pillars of Radio 3’s output. We’d welcome ideas
which link the features to a related series of The Essay.
Support Material
If proposing a presenter new to Radio 3, supporting material, such as CDs or
downloads of previous broadcasting experience, and notes on their experience and
authority on the subject proposed will help your proposal.
Pre-Offers:
All proposals should initially be submitted via Proteus as a Pre-offer of only 200
words, entered in the short synopsis box. We will re-request only those pre-offers
that we’d like to see developed further as full offers. You can then submit a longer
proposal by the closing date. The commissioning editor is available to discuss
proposals.
Proposals should include notes on the proposed presenter (their broadcast
background and, particularly if new to broadcasting, the qualities you think they will
bring), the producer (if unfamiliar to the station), the theme of the programmes and, if
relevant, an indication of how a series will be structured across the week. Please
also include some notes on the treatment.
Budgets
Following the recent successful trial with the commissioning of The Essay, we are
again using the new approach to our commissioning process which resulted in far
fewer detailed negotiations over budgets and the quicker release of contracts.
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There are two categories of guide price for The Sunday Feature up to £8,500 and up
to £10,000 and we will be looking to commission programmes at different points
along this scale. Please submit a price (entered into the “Notes” field) that is realistic
for your proposal, with justification – foreign travel etc - if necessary. At the point of
commission a formal price offer will be made which, if accepted, will result in a
contract being issued immediately at that price, without the need to have budgets
analysed and approved.
Recent and Forthcoming programmes include:
Endnotes: David Foster Wallace
An exploration of the short life and brilliant career of the most prodigiously gifted and influential
writer of his generation, David Foster Wallace. Contemporaries and critics from both sides of
the Atlantic consider the contribution DFW made to the art of the novel, short story and
essay/literary journalism. As his final, unfinished, novel is about to be published, and literary
fragments and relics are gathered, an accelerated process of canonization is occurring. We
ask why.
The World is Out of Order: Georg Buchner
Complementing Radio 3's productions of 'Danton's Death' and 'Woyzeck' Peter Thompson
investigates the life of Georg Buchner and the importance today of the revolutionary dramatist
Among the Ranks of Angels
Philip Pullman recently included the latest English translation of Rilke's Duino Elegies among
his 40 favourite books. Now our major poets reveal why, more than any other modern master,
they are drawn to Rainer Maria Rilke.
A Guernica for Gotham:
Picasso's iconic mural depicts a Basque town obliterated by Nazi planes but where is the key
work of art that represents the destruction of the Twin Towers and what that meant to
Manhattan and the psyche of New York? Judith Kampfner who was a staff cultural reporter at
New York's public radio station in 2001 goes in search of the artistic epitaph, which is most
likely to have lasting significance.
Out in the World
Richard Coles excavates the development of homosexual and lesbian identities through their
cultural representation and historiography.
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Leonardo; Master of Ceremonies
To coincide with the National Gallery's major exhibition "Leonardo: Painter at the Court of
Milan" which will include some of the best known paintings by the great "Renaissance Man",
we reveal a lesser known, but equally astonishing aspect of his work in Milan: his splendid
pageants; operettas, masques and parades which he designed and directed as Master of
Ceremonies.
An Olympick Vision
Radio Three reveals the true origins of the modern Olympics and the foundation of a centuries
old battle to protect play and pastime from the rectitude of the moral minority.
Dee
In a journey through geology and archaeology, community and poetry, Paul Farley crosses
tides, sands and marshes for the story of the Mersey's forgotten shadow-river: the Dee.
Machines Like Us
Paul Bennun explores the latest advances that allow computers to understand and
increasingly imitate humans. From voice recognition systems in GPS units to websites that
know what we want before we do, computers may seem to understand us more, but what are
the social, moral and economic implications. Should we be polite to machines?
Three Centuries of the British Mosque
Humayun Ansari explores the changing place of Muslims within British society through the
prism of mosque-building. From the nineteenth century to the early twenty-first, Humayun tells
stories of devotion, unravels rows about planning, design and funding and asks what the
making of mosques tells us about the changing character of an increasingly multicultural and
multi-faith British society.
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