BBC 6 Music, a digital radio station in the UK specialising in alternative music from all over the spectrum, is rumoured to close as of yesterday when a damning report by the BBC Trust. The report surveyed residents to find that only one in five were aware the station even existed and that it lacked presenters with credibility as music experts. The Times has reported Mark Thompson, the BBC Director General, as saying that the station may be axed to scale back BBC costs and allow commercial rivals more room.
This is absurd. BBC 6 Music has a dedicated and growing listener base of 695,000 in 2010, which is 12% up on the previous year, and although this is small compared to the giants of Radio 1 and 2, it is still perfectly reasonable for a station only available digitally. These days I would bet most radio is listened to while driving, and most cars on the road don’t have a DAB-enabled radio, and cannot pick up 6 Music anyway.
I digress, because it is not the statistics we should be concerned with, but the heart and soul of a station such as this. Unconstrained by the charts and absconding from the terrors that is formularic playlisting (which my father tells me is what made him stop listening to radio), 6 Music has literally unlimited access to the entire BBC archive and is the only station with the remit to play it. The presenters are, on the whole, highly intelligent people with their own passions for music, and, as anyone with a real interest in new music will tell you: these people are at the forefront of introducing artists with their first bit of radio airplay; Tom Robinson’s Evening Sequence being notable for guaranteeing every single piece of music sent into them gets played. 6 Music is one of the most important outlets new artists have, and though 695000 may not seem a lot to a BBC Executive, that number is probably twice or three times the number of plays they have had in their lifetime over the internet.
Where else would Phil Jupitus have a text-in “for whether or not to play Curtain Call by the Damned, in its full 18 minutes of overwrought gothic glory.” And it happened; in the morning breakfast show. He is quoted today in The Guardian: ” Cutting 6 Music is an act of cultural vandalism, and an affront to the memory of John Peel.”
