BBC announces plans for cuts: our open letter
BBC 6Music
The BBC has just confirmed its plans to shed 6Music, the Asian Network and 25% of its online budget. Here’s our writer’s letter, summing up the dire situation.
To Whom It May Concern,
I am writing to you express my disappointment and outrage that the Trust has apparently proposed that 6Music should be closed under a forthcoming strategic review.
I bought a DAB Radio in 2002 and at the time it was purely so that I could listen to 6Music and now, over seven years later, it is still it’s primary function outside listening to Test Match Special. Over this period I’ve started and finished university, changed jobs three times and moved twice and it has been a reassuring presence in my life. Listening to 6Music and the calibre of knowledgeable and charismatic DJs on the station from the beginning with the two Phils at breakfast to the likes of Andrew Collins, Sean Rowley, Pete Mitchell, Vic McGylnn and Bob Harris has been a consistent part of my adult life. I would be greatly distraught if the current home to the likes of Adam and Joe, Craig Charles’s Funk Show, Guy Garvey, Steve Lamacq and Lauren Laverne faced the axe, these are all passionate presenters who care deeply about music and this is always conveyed in the way they put their shows together.
As has been stated by those defending it in the media it would be a great act of cultural vandalism to axe the station. It’s a ludicrous assumption that the listeners to the station would be either be served by either BBC Radio 1 or Radio 2. These stations have a clear demographic that they cater for and I and over half a million others do not fit into. I wish to listen to the radio to hear new music and music that had otherwise passed me by. Radio 1 doesn’t do this during the daytime currently and attempting to squeeze this provision into it would only alienate the existing fans of the station. The same goes for Radio 2 which you yourselves have said ‘must do more to attract ethnic minority listeners and those over 65’. You can’t allow Radio 1 and Radio 2 to become all things to all people as this was the problem they had in the early and late 90s respectively. I would question whether any commercial station would put the time and effort involved in the BBC Introducing programme that has opened my ears to a plethora of brand new bands without the power of major labels behind them and would not get an airing during daylight hours on the rest of the corporation let alone on a rival commercial operator. I also would be sceptical that any commercial operator would allow it’s presenter’s as many free choices an hour for the presenters to give their shows a semblance of their personalities over heavily regimented playlists. Would they allow flights of fancy that have delighted my ears such as all 23 minutes of Genesis’ ‘Supper’s Ready’, the hundreds of hours of Peel Sessions that the station has played since 2002 or Stuart Maconie’s Freak Zone, a show unrivalled for crate digging eclecticism anywhere in the world? Are these the type of listeners that the BBC no longer want to cater for anymore? The gig-goers? The fans who buy vinyl and make lists of their favourite b-sides or top 50 albums of 1979 in their free time? 6Music is successful and can only continue to grow if allowed as there is a gap in the ‘market’ for appealing to listeners like myself.
Most importantly though, considering the political atmosphere and positioning behind the reasons for the cuts I think it is truly outrageous that a body that extols itself as being one that should ‘inform, educate and entertain’ should be considering bowing to commercial pressure from media barons that have no interest in improving the BBC, or the experience of the license payer but are seeking to destroy it. It is much better regarded than right wing newspapers, with vested interests would have you believe and should stand up for itself in the face of unjust criticism remembering that it will always have people who are prepared to do so for it.
Yours faithfully,
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