Save BBC 6 Music, John Peel Radio in all but name
3 March 2010The BBC has published its ’strategy review’, “to decide what the future direction of the corporation ought to be”. The review has recommended that, amongst other offerings, BBC 6 Music be closed.
You can have your say on the proposals online, and it’s important that if you have come to rely on 6 Music as I have that you make sure you’re heard. From what is being said in the media, there’s a good chance that public feeling could reverse this recommendation. You should also join the Save BBC 6 Music group on Facebook, and spread the word via Twitter using the #saveBBC6Music tag.
My consumption of BBC output does not include sport, nor famous people congratulating each other on being wonderful in the guise of an interview. I do not care for those same celebrities ‘competing’ in mindless entertainment shows, nor for most drama – especially the drivel that is soap opera.
If BBC 6 Music closes I will almost wholly consume only news from the BBC – Today, Newsnight and Question Time. Although I believe this to be some of the best of the BBC’s work, and far superior to most commercial news programming, does it represent good value for my licence fee?
I understand and champion the fact that we pay into a central pot so that our money can collectively go further, but I do feel that too much of it is being spent on chasing ratings. BBC 6 Music, in contrast, provides a space in which people can teach each other about new genres and artists – a space that is offered by no other (non-Internet) radio station. This goes as much for listeners as it does presenters, who are encouraged to share the music they love.
Perhaps the most galling aspect of the consultation, therefore, is the fact that 6 Music is said by the BBC to play ‘pop music’. Taking this as a given, the review concludes that as Radio 1 and Radio 2 already play pop music there is no need for 6 Music.
This, however, is not my experience of the station, nor that of myriad people I have spoken to. I’m sure the same goes for the 100,000+ people who have joined the group on Facebook. Does the BBC Trust simply not understand what 6 Music is?
There is literally no other music station that I listen to because they all play – mainly or wholly – playlists dictated by advertisers and large record companies, rather than what presenters and producers think we haven’t heard before and might enjoy – or at least appreciate. BBC 6 Music is as close as we come to having something like Kooba Radio on a national scale, championing unsigned and unknown acts.
For this reason, I affectionately call the station ‘John Peel Radio’, and I think he would be appalled that BBC 6 Music, out of everything the BBC provides, is facing the axe. If BBC3 or Radio 1 were to go, people could access almost exactly identical programming elsewhere. Not so with BBC 6 Music; it does what the BBC should do – serve its listeners and funders, not the market.









