Save 6Music

Much — possibly too much — has already been written about the BBC’s plans to close down its digital stations, 6Music and the Asian Network, in a customarily pathetic attempt to placate its political enemies.

Much — possibly too much — has already been written about the BBC’s plans to close down its digital stations, 6Music and the Asian Network, in a customarily pathetic attempt to placate its political enemies. My first thought, when the plans were leaked and then announced officially, was, how very clever. No one in their right mind would close 6Music, which is a terrific little station and costs buttons. The cutbacks to the BBC website, which is so huge there must be several nooks and backwaters that have never been visited by anyone, had clearly been planned anyway. If you really wanted to save money you would get rid of BBC3, the young people’s TV channel with the mission statement Dare To Be Worse. No one would mourn that for a moment.

So, clearly, the idea was to threaten to close down something really good, wait for the public outcry and then happily reverse the decision to national rejoicing. Except that it wasn’t. As the story developed, it became clear that they really do want to close down 6Music. They don’t want to close down BBC3. They are not being very clever at all.

There is, of course, a lot of pop music played on BBC radio. Radio 1 caters for the kids, over there somewhere, out of our view. Radio 2 has an impossible job, attempting to please about half the population, and does it remarkably well. Radio 1’s offshoot is 1Xtra, which plays ‘urban’ (i.e., black) music. The threatened 6Music is an offshoot of Radio 2 — same controller, much smaller budget and very much smaller audience — but aimed at predominantly white, predominantly male, predominantly young music obsessives.