The BBC have finally publicly announced that they are to cancel the alternative music digital radio station Six Music in a cost cutting measure. Why? Because they are imbeciles.
I have been entirely outraged ever since this decision was announced. It’s one of VERY FEW genuinely alternative radio stations available in this country.
How the FM airwaves can be filled with IDENTICAL stations such as Southern/Heart, Juice, Bright and even Radio 1 (at least in the Brighton area I call home) whilst a station with a playlist actually longer than a Spot the Dog book, playing bands and artists you won’t hear anywhere else is put on the scrap heap is entirely unbelievable.
I think it is fair to say that a great deal more people would listen to 6 Music if they could but DAB in this country was implemented poorly and the technology is already out of date. Many people can’t get decent DAB reception in their homes, let alone in their cars whilst on the move (and that’s if you even have a DAB radio in the car, which is far from standard) so the easiest way to enjoy it is via the internet or if you catch up with downloaded podcasts (which don’t count towards audience figures).
Many years ago, before the days of DAB, the government had strict rules for radio stations wishing to take up FM bandwidth, requiring that they cater to an audience that weren’t already served by existing stations. I was actually involved in a protest rally up in Leicester Square when Capital Radio (now Heart) bought the previously independent Xfm and obliterated its quirky, varied and eclectic playlist, replacing the songs with a comparitively tiny collection of bland pop songs that were already being played on Capital, Heart, Radio 1, Melody and even Magic. After serious pressure from Xfm’s many fans the government stepped in and fined Capital for deviating from the station’s original manifesto (to play predominantly guitar led alternative music) and they bucked their ideas up a little so as not to get in any more trouble, altering the playlist accordingly so it became the station it is today.
Xfm today is much better than the in the early days of the Capital takeover BUT it is still a shadow of its former self in the days when it was independently run.
What strikes me as odd is that we are faced with even less choice than ever on FM frequencies and yet the government’s regulatory bodies to ensure competition and diversity seem to have ignored the fact that Heart have fairly rapidly gobbled up pretty much every commercial station in the UK to make them all idenitcal, as if they weren’t all similar enough anyway. In London both Heart and Capital have always had fairly similar playlists but now they aren’t even competing with each other they seem to make no effort whatsoever to try and differentiate from one another and what is the point of taking up two valuable FM frequencies for what is essentially the exact same output?
I rather suspect the government has let the massive Heart expansion slip under the radar so as to focus its efforts on getting everybody to switch to DAB, even though the simple fact of the matter is that the technology required to receive it is overpriced and not very good quality. The DAB system in this country is an already outdated media as the government went for the cheap option when rolling it out and as a result the quality is nowhere near as good as it should be, or as it is in other countries. We were promised better then cd quality crystal clear recording output and yet most of the time it’s patchy and frequently intermittent at best. It’s no wonder that people haven’t invested in DAB receivers en masse when a £2.99 battery powered FM radio will likely offer you better sound quality.
And this, my friends, is why the BBC are taking the easy option and pulling the plug on BBC 6 Music, because no digital radio station has a sizeable audience share for all the reasons I’ve stated above and thus they’d sooner point to its low listener figures as justification for pulling the funding to spunk up the wall on yet more dross to be served up on BBC 3 (home of Two Pints of Lager and endless imported episodes of Family Guy).
I genuinely believe we have one of THE worst radio networks in the WORLD here thanks to the severe lack of choice. There are tiny island states with more varied radio stations than we have. In fact if you drive through some of the most barren American backwaters whilst turning the radio dial in your car you will still pick up a station playing country music, another station playing contemporary rock, one playing “oldies”, a shock jock talk show, a light pop station, maybe even one playing electronic music OR (in the case of South Carolina for instance) a station devoted ENTIRELY to the fairly niche genre of English Folk music. BUT traverse the FM frequencies anywhere in the UK and you’ll find only the 4 national BBC stations, one or two local BBC stations, Classic FM and a selection of identical commercial chart music stations. THIS IS NOT DIVERSITY.
Whenever I’m in the car I only listen to the radio if I can pick up a pirate station which at least offers something genuinely different.
If you ask me we should all take a leaf out of the Brighton FIP fan’s book and start broadcasting what we like from rudimentary broadcasing equipment (as can be bought from Maplins and the like) hidden in attics or other out of sight spaces. For TEN years FIP was broadcast to Brighton ILLEGALLY by a technically minded fan who was sick of the serious lack of options available to us in this country and loved the huge variety of the seemingly limitless playlist of this funny little commercial free French radio station where the only occasional talking was entirely inoffensive due to being softly spoken non sensical French rather than over the top, irritating British radio DJ drivel.
If everyone with a DAB or internet connection plugged in a half decent FM transmitter to broadcast BBC 6 Music over the airwaves on an unused frequency from their homes then I will bet you people would listen in their droves.
It’s high time people took a stand and spoke out about the fact that we are being severely short changed in this country and that ACTUALLY we don’t ALL fall into exactly the same category of monotonous musically braindead drones.
