Tag: closure

Just sent this...gotta go, aiming to be at the flashmob at 6pm and I'm late typing this! Dear BBC Trust, I am writing to complain and also question the proposed closure of 6Music and Asian Network. It seems to me strange in a Strategy that quite rightly puts quality in the forefront that it would close some of it's best stations (in my personal case 6Music is the only BBC station I listen to) as part of that strategy. Where are the Reithian ideals of community service and coverage in this strategy? It seems to ignore diversity, community for a retreat into a monoculture of a hazy ideal of better shows, which are yet to appear...I am not confident this is not a smokescreen for a numbers exercise; that the bigger stations won't go on as before. Radio 1 has incredibly and crassly commercial programming, as does Radio 2 - I see no 'home' for my and the nearly 800,000 people (it would be more if 6Music was allowed to have a wider reach, say with FM or a better signal with the digital switchover) there. It seems the BBC wants everyone in their own demographic bunker, their own ghetto, without actually understanding there are those who don't want to be boxed in, marketed/advertised to as if they were a tin of beans - those whose love of music goes beyond genre, demographics, and easy pre-digested babychunks. I think this is a wider malaise at the BBC, the move towards niche demographics - 6Music is a niche in size only but not scope, it's breadth and open minded approach should be a model for the rest of the BBC, rather than stomped on because it doesn't fit. I think a lot of the 6Music listeners miss the days when Radio 1 would play a wider range of music, rather than a few token late night shows, and the BBC would represent a wider range of interests rather than just go for a bland middleground that satisfies no-one. As an 'emigre' from XFM - who decided to change it's strategy and mostly abandon the same ground that 6Music picked up (including many of the DJs and hosts) - shows that commercial interests can't be trusted to promote newer and alternative less covered genres of music, when sponsors and advertisers are in the forefront of their m ind. The idea that the BBC shouldn't compete with commercial stations and ratings is a good one - so why then close the exact exemplars of this creed? The stations that carry community service and the ideas of people like John Peel that new, unsigned and alternative music needs a home in a morass of middle ground mainstream? I'd hate to think what Peel would think if he was alive, it's a sad day for the memory of him and new music in the UK and outside - the artists, the DJs, the music industry and even the Shadow Culture Secretary (bringing the spectre that this will be an election issue now) are all dead against this as they realise the value that 6Music gives in breaking newer acts, and unlike other BBC channels really adding something. So why not you?

Tag: closure

Open Letter to the BBC Trust

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