99 problems but the 6 ain't one

Less than two weeks after a surprisingly positive review into digital radio station 6 Music, the BBC is considering scrapping the network.

This is not only an extremely short-sighted, headline-grabbing decision designed to appease political and commercial opponents, but also directly contravenes the Corporation's mandate.

In 1922, Lord Reith declared the BBC's mission in elegant terms. "The BBC is here to inform, educate and entertain, to enrich people's lives." Eighty years later, I fell in love with a radio station that followed these guidelines to the letter.

Jude Rogers, The Guardian

Fans of the station – who, although "few in number", certainly work hard to ensure their voices are heard – have already put forward extremely eloquent and passionate arguments for keeping, protecting and investing more in the station. There is little that I can add to the words of Phill Jupitus, Andrew Collins, Alistair Harper et al.

Far from being an example of what's wrong with the Beeb, 6 Music is a beautiful example of the BBC at its best.

Richard Bacon

The facts are clear: the listenership is (comparatively) small, but devoted. Unlike Radio 1, there are no commercial broadcasters fighting for the 6 Music audience – and certainly none capable of replicating the quality, range and depth of output. Coupled with the role that 6 Music plays in promoting new music, unsigned acts and niche genres, it is the very model of Public Service Broadcasting:

6 Music is a crucial platform for new music and has been instrumental in furthering careers of countless acts... As well as helping bands find an audience, that audience is one that is passionate about music. [It] is vital.

Lisa Matthews, manager, Welsh Music Foundation

6 Music keeps the spirit of broadcasters like John Peel alive and for new artists to lose this station would be a great shame.

David Bowie

Let's look at some numbers:

Subscription to Last.fm costs £36.00 a year; Spotify costs £119.88 a year. Based on these figures, I'd say that 6 Music is a pretty good deal.

Now let's have a look at some other national networks:

These figures are back-of-an-envelope calculations (sources listed below), but they give a rough indication of how much the Beeb is spending. It's staggering that the Asian Network is also facing the axe (especially as, if nothing else, it's role as Public Service Broadcaster to the 2.4million Asians living in Britain is far greater than 6 Music's service to ardent music fans).

Forget about bringing people together within their own living rooms – radio brings nations together! And if we have that ability, do we really want to waste it by playing (the admittedly quite enjoyable) Cast of Glee? No. We want to champion new music, refresh our memories with the favourite bands we’ve long forgotten, and generally widen the cultural boundaries of everyone at the other end of that magical digital squiggle of zeroes and ones.

Stephen Thomas, For Folks Sake


Over 71,000 people have joined the Save BBC 6 Music Facebook group. I hope you will feel compelled to do the same.

Notes
Annual cost
Radio 2 - actual figures for 2008-09, taken from BBC Trust report. Programming costs were £26.7million (music licensing fees account for the rest); 6 Music - station budget for 2008-09; Radio 3 - taken from here (July 2009); Radio 4 - taken from here (2005-06); Asian Network - taken from here (April 2008); Radio 1 - taken from here (April 2008).

Adult listeners per week
Radio 2 and 6 Music - figures from BBC Trust report; Radio 3, Radio 4, Asian Network, Radio 1 - RAJAR quarterly listening figures (October - December 2009).

Cost per listener, licence fee payer
Per year. Quick maths based on the above figures and the numbers quoted in the BBC Trust report. Numbers rounded to the nearest penny, but some margin for error to be expected as I've used the figures in the BBC Trust report to work out the formulas.

Amendments
This article has been updated twice since being posted. Once for spelling and grammar; I've also changed the figures quoted for Last.fm and Spotify from monthly to yearly prices for easier comparison.