The Salvation of teh 6Musics
So it seems that 6Music has been saved for now, which is very good news. Saved is not entirely accurate I suppose; perhaps reprieved might be more like it. There is still every chance it could go if the BBC were to include the cut in a broader re-strategising of their digital radio offering.
The proposed cuts seemed punitive rather than strategic, a suspicion strongly reinforced by the recent utterances of Tim Montgomerie: “Disgraceful that 6Music has been saved. When will the BBC share in the pain?” I think we can all agree that he comes across as a stupid cunt, but I am not really going to dig at that too much, as No Rock and Roll Fun has done a much better job of dismantling his nonsense here.
The thing which has been itching at me ever since this was announced was nicely summed up by the Daily Mash (a brilliant site, by the way – sort of like a British Onion) at the time the cuts were first threatened. The first paragraph of this article sums it up quite neatly: “The closure of the BBC’s 6 Music has enraged thousands of people who insist it is the sort of thing they would probably have liked if they had ever got round to listening to it.”
I am thrilled that 6Music has been saved and it is the only radio station I would ever choose to listen to, but as many have said, what of the Asian Network? Well it’s a slightly stupid question, and throws the point made by the Daily Mash above into sharp relief. I like the idea of the Asian Network, in that it sounds like it is probably a good idea, it is nevertheless not aimed at me, not anything I ever listened to and therefore not something I know the slightest thing about.
So really, for me to weep and wail about the Asian Network all I would be doing would be rather hollowly defending something which sounded like the right sort of thing for the BBC to be doing. Honestly, though, it would be a shallow protest, because I have no fucking idea whether the Asian Network really does merit preservation or not.
As anyone who lamented the demise of the Bowery here in Edinburgh last year should have instinctively known when its takeover was first mooted, it is not enough to like the idea of something, we have to actually use it. One of the reasons the Bowery ended up without a particularly strong negotiating position was that most of us who liked the idea of it didn’t actually go there often enough to keep it open.
Equally with 6Music, do those of us who hate the idea of it closing actually listen to the station all that much? Do those of us who love independent music actually go to the gigs our favourite promoters put on, or buy the music our favourite labels and bands release?
One of the reasons the things I love are often called ‘alternative’ is simply descriptive: they are things which not all that many people really like all that much. Things which are not popular often, for simple economic reasons, can no longer afford to exist. All of which brings me back to the initial point, which is that it is all very well to like the idea of this sort of thing, and quite right to be thrilled that 6Music is, for now, not going to be shut down. But really, protests and petitions are one thing, but the only real way to support this kind of stuff is to actually make a point of using it as often as possible.
With its comparatively miniscule budget, keeping 6Music open is more a victory for common sense than anything else.
Supposedly the closure of the Asian Network should encourage commercial propositions filling that market, but the BBC should note that when they opened the Asian Network in the first place, commercial Asian stations up and down the country were forced to shut down. Helpful, that.
An overarching problem here is that the BBC persists in making its judgements of radio stations predominantly on ratings (which are rather shaky at best) than on quality. ie. Fearne Cotton will have consistently high listenership, but her listenership will consist of deaf 5 year olds.
THEY CAME FIRST for the Asian Network,
and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Asian.
Ah – here it is. My involvement in signing the petitions was mainly selfish as they played The Foxx once or twice and it seems a pretty good avenue for us in the future. Is that bad? Probably.
As for the Asian Network – I cant get my head round positive discrimination. Why call it Asian network at all? Why not just have all that banghra etc on a station and call it 7Music? I mean – they arent really playing music thats actually from Asia are they so what’s the point?
They came second for self-righteous shites who use poems written about resisting Nazism for every little thing that annoys them,
And I didn’t speak up because I was right there with them, kicking the fuckers in the head.
eh?
Settle AnotherDave. There’s a little thing called humour you really should have heard of. Look it up.
Besides which I’m making quite a reasonable point about supporting things even if they don’t appeal to us personally. I’ve no interest in the Asian Network and not really going to mourn it’s loss, but if the reasons given for it’s closure are as bullshity as those for 6musics, it doesn’t really seem fair. How much money can really be saved by closing such tiny station?
“THEY CAME FIRST for the Communists,
and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Communist.
THEN THEY CAME for the trade unionists,
and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a trade unionist.
THEN THEY CAME for the Jews,
and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Jew.
THEN THEY CAME for me
and by that time no one was left to speak up.”
written about the Nazi purges in the 1930s and dredged up by fuckwits on a distressingly regular basis, as in:
THEY CAME FIRST for the Asian Network,
and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Asian.
Because the BBC shuttering a niche radio station is exactly the same as thugs battering down your door at three in the morning because you checked Das Kapital out of the uni library. Of course. How could I possibly be so blind.
Sorry. Shouldn’t be getting quite so shouty on the bottom half of the internet. I’ll just go have a cup of tea or something.
The internet is in halves?
I thought it sounded funny. Your aggression is misplaced.
People are getting rather touchy thesedays on here.
peace and love, peace and love.
It’s the summer. The Heat. The short, pale nights.
Drives everyone a little batshit-crazy.
I spoke to a couple of friends and colleagues from an Asian background around the time that the 6music campaign was kicking off about their feelings toward the Asain Network, being as it the campaigns were being linked and I was keen on the 6music side.
I didn’t pick up a lot of love for it, if I’m honest.
What heat??? it feels like autumn in Edinburgh again already!!
“Do those of us who love independent music actually go to the gigs our favourite promoters put on, or buy the music our favourite labels and bands release?”
Just so glad to hear someone point that out. Nice one.
I’m sure Jeremy is a very nice person in real life and is in no way deserving of having bile slung at him on the internet.
“They came for the X…” remains, however, one of those noble sentiments that has been utterly debased through repeated application to things like smoking in bars, carrying assault rifles and hitting one’s kids with a cricket bat. Because of this, whenever someone breaks it out and sits back looking like they’ve said something clever I get annoyed.
Not getting any hits for “humour” though. Anyone able to help?
AnotherDave and Jeremy, stop fighting, it isn’t nice and you two really are friends even if you don’t know it yet. I know both of you well enough, and trust me, I’m right.
Ali – well I have to confess I am guilty myself. I try, and I am not too bad, but I could do a fuck of a lot better. 6Music is where I am the worst, actually.
6 music is great, and i listen to it for at least an hour a day.
my fave promos seldom but music on i like or love at the time.
The thing about the Asian Network is even it’s target demographic aren’t very keen on it, and there are alternatives.; there’s a very strong network of community based Asian stations in and around the areas with high Asian populations.
If you look at what happened after the announcement of the proposed closures in May’s RAJAR figures while 6 Music piled on an extra 330,000 odd listeners and increased the amount of time those listeners tuned in by 2/5 (admittedly some over zealous reporting probably needs to factored in, we’ll see come August how that holds up) the Asian Network pretty much stood still.
So in other words it really isn’t doing its job particularly well?
the Asian network may be doing it job perfectly well……it’s just the fact that the supporters of the Save the Asian Network (if any) did a pretty shite job of forwarding their message.
That’s the impression I’ve got from everything I’ve read and I certainly didn’t get the impression there was a massive uproar in the Asian community as you might expect if it was seen by them as a valuable service.
6 Music plays a key role in supporting a whole range of less exposed music. It could certainly be doing more I feel, particularly for small labels and new bands, but it at least seems to have an important place in the BBC’s music station line up. It’s also important for digital switch over, which in theory frees up FM for more community and local radio (like student radio which, for those who don’t know, I have a keen interest in).
The Asian network just seems a bit lost. I suspect BBC local stations carry a lot of content for immigrant populations of all sorts where their locality makes sense for them to do so – which in my mind makes a lot more sense than a national digital only station, at least at this stage and under it’s current form.
I never listened to the Asian network so I’m hesitating to make this suggestion, as I may be way off the mark, but from the way it was advertised and promoted it looked like the Asian Network was aimed at a youth market. As Tim pointed out, that market has pretty much catered for itself.
If I’m correct to say the the Asian Network was targetting a youth market, that might have been their mistake, and they may have done better taking a broader approach, adopting the “Radio 2″ model, and presenting programming that would appeal to the wider adult age-group.
Other than the general mainstream media, Radio 2 itself if you will, I don’t know if there’s much adult output to reflect the different cultures in the UK. I also don’t know if there’s a market for it..
I don’t know much, do I?
who fucking cares really…..6 music is here to stay!
Well yes, and I whole heartedly agree with the sentiment of the post about supporting the endeavours you care about – be they radio, gigs or records.
Sorry, someone prodded the radio geek in me.
Tim, your geeky rambling has been the only which made this post even slightly interesting.
Matthew and Tim sitting in a tree
K I S S I N G
No thanks, I saw the state of his beard a week a go.
Made me think of this http://www.discsdirect.co.nz/discs/images/Ebooks/Robinson%20Crusoe.jpg
Playground flirting Tim. That is one sexy beard.
The trouble with the ‘make sure you use it’ advice is that the compilation of radio and TV listening/viewing figures is less an accurate statistical analysis than a finger in the wind crock of shite.
The data all comes from a ‘study group’, and as far as I can ascertain it seems to boil down to one family in Kent remembering to write down in a notebook every time they change the station/channel.
I kid, but the BBC’s idea of who is actually listening to 6Music and who is sitting slack-jawed while Chris Moyles churns away in the background is heavily flawed.
Even if you assume that the BBC was to make decisions based on how many people actually listened to 6Music, you still couldn’t be sure they were even aware you were listening to it.
So in the end, complaining into the internet echo chamber was probably the right thing to do.
Definitely the right thing to do, I would never dispute that under the circumstances. I think I’m just trying to say ‘okay, now we’ve got it back I think more of us should actually listen to it’. Because I bet fewer of listen to it than object to the idea of it being shut.
I may not go to gigs much these days but I do bloody listen to 6Music all the bloody time thank you very much. Even when I’m asleep.
Totally senseless choice of photograph to accompany this post. We have truly entered the realms of postmodern nihilism if one of the most powerful and shocking photographs of the twentieth century is now deemed as an appropriate accompaniment to some narcissist’s banal blog post about a BBC radio station. The End is nigh.
“stay of execution” + Google image search = yeah sure, that’ll do.
I can put up the picture of the penis with the Prince Albert again if it’s particularly getting on your nerves.
Jesus, you should listen to the podcasts!
I would have preferred the opposite result, although it was never going to happen once Saint Jarvis stuck his beardy nose in.
6 is just a kind of sump for BBC hacks and officially sanctioned middle aged taste makers, a place to play their listener’s record collections back at them because the record player has been put in the garage and its space taken by a bean bag by the laptop.
Asian Network, however, acknowledged that this country was big and broad enough in its maturity to try to provide music and programmes for a large section of its population who know and have known some of the vilest aspects of the UK over the years. It was a statement of intent and just as if not more important than the embarrassed gaelic slots on TV. It didn’t matter if one or one hundred thousand listened, just its existence was a comfort.
A kind of balance to Chris Moyles’ ugly hectoring.
You see, I wouldn’t disagree with you at all, which is why I was hesitant to make a comment this way or that in terms of the Asian Network.
In my mind, unfortunately, I know exactly what the costs of sacrificing 6Music are, but I have no idea what the costs of sacrificing the Asian Network might be because I am miles away from their target demographic. So if I were to protest it would be a knee-jerk display of ignorance, where what I need is a bit of insight into how well the Asian Network was actually connecting with the people it wanted to connect with, because at the moment I genuinely have no idea.
btw i’m with the Voice of Reason on the choice of photo…..
What, you’d prefer the bell-end?
Nah, I know what you mean, but I wasn’t being flippant in my reply. It really was a case of the first thing which came up in an image search for stay of execution.
Its a pretty harrowing image. A bit like that man that was blown up to pieces you posted before. I think you should start putting up pictures of cats instead to balance this shit out.
Well that land-mine one was for a very specific purpose, so I think it was fair enough. I’ll change this one, you guys are right, it’s a bit stupid to have used it.
rocking
That new picture is smart as feck.
“The salmonnn moussssse!”
I thought it was Python but I wasn’t sure! Reminds me of my trip to Alton Towers when I went on the Th13teen ride. Stupid name I know. But it was smaaaaaaart. Although there was rather disappointingly no wraiths walking around the park.
It IS Python, right?
I’m not sure it’s appropriate to be using Python quite so flippantly.
Snigger.
Matthew, at least you are aware of the impacts and realities of your supporting/not supporting a radio station / new band / gig promoter / what have you. Crucially, you are also aware enough to realise the value in gently pointing this out to others.
Far better that, doing something to help even while lamenting the fact you feel you could be doing more than being willfully ignorant in the first place and doing bugger all.
I’m not into posting on good blogs to try and drive traffic to my site – suffice to say I wrote a Pin Ups fanzine article a few months back – with sample lines: “[6Music is] possibly the most popular station on several other planets too, because the amount of folk claiming to be listeners comfortably eclipses Planet Earth’s population. Based on sales of DAB digital radios we have calculated that there must be approximately 27 people standing around each DAB digital set listening to 6 Music.”
Basically there was alot of weeping and gnashing of teeth from folk who never even listened to it. There are 1 or 2 terrific shows – Mark Radcliffe and Shaun Keaveney, the rest, as Tim London perceptively writes above, are shows which play the listeners music collections back to them.
D.
“I’m not into posting on good blogs to try and drive traffic to my site”
No worries – you can always post here instead!
I agree with you really. I loved Marc Riley and Gideon Coe, but the daytime playlist left me really cold and a lot of the presenters were shite. Mind you, with NME Radio shutting down, I don’t know where else people will go.
Interesting point about playing people’s own collections, because I had rather assumed that’s what these massive (often pirated) digital collections were often for: not to accumulate your favourite songs, like a physical collection tended to be, but to have a giant Radio Station of ME! available to people, so they could hit random and hear stuff they already know they like.
That last bit, of course, is the main benefit of radio for me. If it’s stuff I already know I like, I’ll just listen to my own collection, thanks.