Euroclassic Notturno is a six-hour sequence of classical music recordings assembled by BBC Radio from material supplied by members of the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) and streamed back to those broadcasters by satellite for use in their overnight classical-music schedules. The recordings used are not normally taken from commercially available CDs but come instead from earlier (usually live) radio broadcasts.
Contents
Though supplied by the BBC on a commercial basis, the service nevertheless claims to provides broadcasters with a less expensive alternative to local origination of overnight classical-music programming.
Format
The sequence is put together by a small BBC team in London, and gaps are provided in the schedule to allow for local origination of explanatory material in each broadcaster's national language (written programme notes in English are supplied by the BBC some weeks in advance), top-of-the-hour news summaries, etc. In the United Kingdom, however, the sequence is broadcast on BBC Radio 3 without news.
Broadcast
The service is streamed from London between 0.00 and 6.00 Central European Time seven days a week, though actual transmission times may be shifted locally – the BBC itself, for instance, broadcasts its own version (which goes out under the title Through the Night) between 0.30 and 6.30 on Mondays to Fridays, and from 1.00 till 7.00 on Saturdays and Sundays. As transmission is unattended the playout servers are duplicated to provide resilience, although the service has, in fact, run reliably since 1998.
Broadcasters
EBU member broadcasting organizations currently taking the service include (all indicated times are local):
EBU members that previously carried the service include: