Tonight:
8°c
Last week, the latest RAJAR audience research figures revealed that while radio listening altogether is at an all-time high of 45.8 million adults each week, Radio 3's share of that audience is just 1.1 per cent.
This week, though, Radio 3 was declared UK Station of the Year at the Sony Radio Academy Awards.
Quite right, too. Throughout its history, ever since the creation of the Third Programme back in 1946, the network has attracted criticism for being elitist, for costing far too much per listener.
Yet here it still is, determinedly putting out the kind of programming that by its nature can never attract a mass audience. In the current climate, that's near miraculous.
The network's previous controller, Nicholas Kenyon, mistakenly tried to compete with Classic FM (despite vociferously denying that was what he was doing), making the network more populist but no more popular.
His successor, Roger Wright, Radio 3's controller since 1998, has tended the schedules far more understandingly.
Wright created the enjoyable night-time show Late Junction and the intelligent spoken-word series The Essay.
He has remained dedicated to concert performances at both lunchtime and evening, even if more now are recorded rather than actually live. He has maintained the station's commitment to drama, both classic and experimental.
He has overseen many successful, specially themed seasons - memorably delivering all of Bach and Beethoven, or, for example, last weekend, a lot of Mendelssohn.
Where programmes had been created that did not work convincingly - the children's show Making Tracks, Stage and Screen, Brian Kay's Light Programme - they have been dropped.
Mercifully, the over-promotion of World Music is a bit in abeyance these days, too.
The result is that Radio 3 is currently in great shape. The schedules at the moment look close to ideal. Give or take a few personal allergies to particular presenters, you can listen to Radio 3 all day, every day, and be delighted, always diverted, never patronised.
In its understated way, it remains central to the cultural life of this country, a core justification of the licence fee.
That the industry awards body has finally recognised that fact, despite those unyielding audience statistics, is splendid news.
The Lord's final offer to the city of Sodom, we may remember, was to spare the whole place if just 100 righteous men could be found.
