Budget cuts were real. Looked through the schedules out of curiosity, BBC have really only planned to televise the Saturday and Sunday headliners at Reading. It looks like they've had to make a choice between Reading and Glastonbury, and with factors like the time of year (mid-summer vs. last long weekend of summer), interest and viewership, they chose their flagship Glastonbury coverage while axing a lot of Reading. Sad, but I think they made the right choice on that.
Also, they have had to spell it out in words. Written all over it is one word: budget
#Reading and Leeds#It is Not as extensive as last year's#the fact that they've straight-up axed Friday's *Main stage* headliner is so funny to me 💀 like sorry Blink 182#I know a lot of people like them n all but nope. You're not on telly#I hope we get some footage of Kneecap eventually ;)#music#music festival#BBC#TV#radio#even radio coverage is limited! 6 Music is completely not going (Glasto is their event) and Radio 1 is not doing as much live-to-air covera#wonder why-- radio live-from-soundboard isn't as expensive at television right?? My campus radio station has broadcast live-to-airs before.#You can do a decent job of it with not too much. It's just more of a complete scaleback#I wonder if (esp. because it's 1 and not 6) they were wary of language/content complaints#they don't allow artists to swear at Radio 1's Big Weekend (cue the now-famous Sabrina Carpenter 'PG nonsense outro' clip)#they can't control it at Reading. If they did what 6 does and announced a content warning at the top of the hour they would#be DECIMATED. INUNDATED with complaints#1 is held to a far stricter standard than literally most of world radio#they censored the word 'loo' in Master Peace's song; I fucking cried#but also their listenership aims younger which kinda tells you why they're more cautious#also this is John Reith's legacy etc. etc.