The BBC are planning a range of cuts including the axing of BBC 6 Music and the Asian Network.
BBC 6 Music is, at the moment a purely Digital station (DAB radio) but is one of the few places to hear new bands and music that doesn’t make the mainstream stations like Radio One. Those of us who remember the late (and great) John Peel and what he did in promoting and advocating music that was a little different should feel stongly about this as BBC 6 Music should be seen as his successor.
Even if you are not a regular BBC 6 Music listener, the loss of this station would be a disaster for new music, independent labels and up and coming bands.
A friend of mine has drafted the letter below to the BBC…..Please read it and think how you should also respond. The decision can stil be reversed according to the Guardian Newspaper
To whom it may concern,
I’m sure by now you have received a whole raft of these types of email from far and wide. Well here’s what I have to say. I’m not an avid listener of 6 Music by any means. That, however is for one reason alone, it is only available on digital. The only means by which I can listen to these station is via my television and the likelihood of me wanting to cart that round on bus journeys is quite low. I can’t justify investing in a digital set either for one station. My listening is therefore more modest than I would like.
The issue of 6 Music’s small listener base isn’t popularity, isn’t the programming, isn’t the content, it’s the medium by which it is delivered and the exposure it is given. When 6 Music first started, I was so excited, finally those of us that really cared about contemporary popular music had a refuge from the over-hyped and over-marketed dross and drivel that was being pumped out of Radio 1. The vacuous presenters, the passion-free manufactured trash that most of the population listen to. THis has it’s place; Radio 1 needs to exist to appease the masses. However, there is a gap. That gap was filled admirably by 6 Music. If 6 Music had been a channel on FM, the 69,000 maximum listener staistic could have been ten times that. The problem with 6 Music, isn’t the popularity, it’s the availability. The simple fact is that, digital radio hasn’t been adopted at the rate everyone wanted. Leaving a gem like 6 Music on that platform was it death sentence, the nail in the coffin, the fact that little effort went into promoting it.
Save 6 Music. Don’t let it die, cut some of the drivel and use it to breath some fresh life into an amazing resource. An amazing resource not only for us, those of us who really care about music, but those artists that have benefited from it too. Put it on FM too, expose the population to it by that tried, trusted and very much alive format. Please help us BBC Trust.
Yours faithfully,
Andy Cowley
You can Follow Andy and his band here