Radio3

Sixty years after its first broadcast, on 1 Octoer 1950, Radio3 is still the only free cultural station that dedicates all its programming to quality music and culture.

An expansion of themes and languages during 2009 prepared the new programming in force from 11 January 2010.

With 1,892,000 listeners in the second half of the year, it was confirmed as one of the top ten national radio stations.

The heart of Radio3's commitment to production and programming continues to be music.

During the year the network broadcast 925 live music events, with 208 actually going out live on air and about 300 recorded by the radio station. Considerable programming space was devoted to opera and musical theatre, with 104 titles broadcast and about 40 titles coming from theatres in other countries. The most prestigious appointments were the inauguration of the main Italian and foreign theatre seasons, contemporary music festivals and events focusing mainly on research.

Radio3 is also the European public radio station which dedicates most space to jazz (70 concerts broadcast live or recorded) and borderline music with a continuative and structured offering.

Radio3 also organises and directly produces important festivals and events which offer space to the best of the emerging generation.

Another project which involves Radio3 in the production of live music seasons is that of 'I Concerti di Radio3 a Palazzo Venezia'. The 2009 edition was dedicated entirely to performers from Abruzzo, as a tribute to the lively musical culture of a region devastated by an earthquake.

For the theatre, Rai3 intensified the broadcasts of live entertainment in the two auditorium halls of Via Asiago, proposing a series of arrangements � often designed or adapted for radio � which were particularly significant. These included De Profundis by Oscar Wilde, performed by Paolo Bonacelli, and Caligola by Albert Camus revisited by Roberto Latini. The Radio3 theatre began a collaboration with the ETI - Ente Teatrale Italiano - inviting some of the artists from the project Monografie di Scena, such as Spiro Scimone and Francesco Sframeli.

The special programmes that took Radio3 out of its studios to report on Italy's major cultural events in 2009 included Fahrenheit which monitored � hosting all the stars of the live events � the Turin Book Fair, Festivaletteratura in Mantua, the Philosophy Festival of Modena and that of Roma, Galassia Gutenberg in Naples, Minimondi in Parma and the small and medium publishers' fair 'Più libri più liberi' in Roma, where the 'Fahrenheit Book of the Year' award ceremony was held.

Radio3 Scienza reported on all the new scientific publications at the Turin Book Fair, the Genoa Science Festival, and the Rome Science Festival, organising and broadcasting a series of meetings dedicated to Charles Darwin live from Rome's Palladium Theatre. Hollywood Party monitored all the most important film festivals, like those of Berlin, Cannes, the Torino Film Festival and the Rome Film Festival, also offering numerous previews of films in the popular Sunday appointment 'Cinema alla radio', as well as a series of special programmes presented by celebrities from the new Italian film world, like Gabriele Muccino, Filippo Timi and Marco Risi.

2009 also consolidated the huge success of the readings of major novels Ad Alta Voce, which was confirmed as the champion of the download classifications in Radio3's podcast offering. It was partly due to this success that the entire network was first in the RadioRai podcast classification, with over 500,000 downloads a month.

April was marked by the dreadful earthquake in Abruzzo, to which Radio3 responded with numerous analyses and a special musical programming during the days of national mourning.

Special programmes designed, produced and broadcast by Radio3 included, in May, Serenissima on the ancient routes from Venice to Byzantium and the new series of the innovative, sophisticated and irreverent radio variety show Dottor Djembè by and with Stefano Bollani and David Riondino.