It’s not just about BCB – Save BBC 6Music
It may seem a rum do to use these BCB pages to promote another network, but the proposed closure of BBC’s digital station 6Music will be a great loss to new artists and music lovers alike, and anyone who enjoys Selection Box or indeed any of the other BCB specialist music shows should do everything in their power to show the BBC that any decision to close down 6Music should be reversed.
For further details as to how to join the campaign, go to http://www.love6music.com/ and sign the petition, join the Facebook group and also follow my example and complain to the BBC.
I have submitted my complaint to the BBC this evening. Here is my complaint in full:
Recent press reports have indicated that the BBC intends to close down its digital stations 6Music and the Asian Network. Having never listened to it, I cannot comment on the latter, so I shall confine my comments to discussion of 6Music alone, to which I am a daily listener.
I think any moves to close down 6Music are unjustifiable and a betrayal of the corporation’s Missions & Values.
In a press statement released today by BBC Director General Mark Thompson, he claims that the BBC “has the confidence to concentrate on what it does best: which is to deliver services of outstanding quality and originality and to be a beacon of creativity and excellence for audiences everywhere”. No other music station on the network demonstrates these values better than 6Music – a station which serves to bold enough in its approach to introduce new artists to a wider audience.
This approach also has a knock-on effect to more populist stations such as Radios 1 & 2. The likes of Elbow, and Florence & The Machine – both regulars on the playlists of R1 & R2 – were first given regular airtime on 6Music and may have failed to reach the wider audiences without the play time from 6Music. 6Music is therefore aiding the breakthrough of artists as well as serving listeners with interest in artists from leftfield. To close down 6Music is therefore to stifle the creativity of the BBC’s other music radio stations.
The initial report by the Times newspaper which claimed that the BBC was set to close 6Music claimed that “Mark Thompson, the Director-General, will admit that the corporation [...] has become too large and must shrink to give its commercial rivals room to operate.” Any decision to close 6Music based on this proviso is entirely contrary. No commercial rival to 6Music exists – only Xfm attempts to cater to a similar audience, but it does not attempt the range or scope of 6Music, making its playlist of largely guitar-based acts, whereas 6Music seeks to reach all tastes and musical interests (within reason – classic music is left to the likes of Radio 3). No commercial station broadcasts a music show with a live act every night as Marc Riley’s 6Music show does. No commercial station broadcasts a mix of folk, jazz, soul, rock, punk, garage etc like the Freak Zone. No commercial station has shows dedicated to soul, heavy rock or dance. No commercial station is brave enough to take those risks. It is right and proper that the BBC is the corporation which has successfully taken the risks and pushed the boundaries as to what a music station can provide.
The Times report also states that “only 20 per cent of adults knew that the station existed”. Not only is this actually a statistic of any true meaning or significance, it is also no excuse to dispense with the service. As Mark Thompson has said today in his statement, “in public space everyone is as important and as valuable as everyone else.” The public deserve to be served by the BBC we all pay for – and it is to the BBC’s credit that 6Music has been allowed to grow into the station it has now become since its inception in 2002.
The results of a review of Radios 2 and 6Music was released last week. This was a review I personally contributed to via an online feedback form at the BBC website. The review states that “Over the last four years the station’s audience has grown faster than any other BBC digital radio-only
service”. This clearly shows that there is an audience for the service, and one where new listeners are sticking with 6Music as a station they wish to listen to.
As I have intimated, the statistics given about the percentage of adults listening to 6Music are of little relevance to the debate and are effectively meaningless anyway. The claim that only 20% of adults in the UK have heard of the station actually equates to over 10 million people – more, I would argue, than a good deal of a lot of the BBC’s output. However, the success and importance of 6Music cannot be measured necessarily in volume. Listenership of stations like Radio 1 and Radio 2 is often habitual and made casually to a certain extent. It is flicked on in cars, at work places and at home often out of routine. In some of these places – particularly in cars – digital services are not available. Populist radio stations are often tuned into out of a search for something familiar, and listeners dip and out. Listeners to 6Music on the other hand are coming to the station out of purpose. They tune into the station because it offers something specific which is not available anywhere else.
The BBC’s mission statement claims that “great things happen when we work together.” I implore the BBC to work with the thousands who have logged impassioned pleas in petitions and social networking sites to save 6Music from the chop. Great things have happened since the creation of the station, and its increasing listenership hope that even greater things will come in the future.
Patrick Thornton presents Selection Box, Mondays at Midnight on BCB 106.6fm