Why 6 Music should be saved (And not just because I like it)

I have to admit I love 6 Music. I listen to it all the time, and if they do get rid of it, there won’t be much point me even owning a radio any more, let alone a digital one. But that’s not the only reason it should be saved.


I would take issue with BBC Director General Mark Thompson’s crude characterisation of the station as a “pop music” station. In an interview with the BBC News Channel (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/8545538.stm), Mr Thompson said: “We have, in Radio 1 and Radio 2, two popular music, UK-wide radio stations and we should concentrate on doing everything we need to do, in terms of bringing popular music to audiences in this county with those two stations.” Now, anyone with even a cursory familiarity with those three radio stations will know that the content of each of them is completely different to the others. And even if you don’t, there is still the fact that, as Private Eye points out (issue 1258, pg 10), Radio 1 is aimed at 15-29-year-olds, while Radio 2’s audience has an average age of 50, and the BBC Trust has recommended that it do more to target the over-65s. That leaves a lot of people falling into the large gulf between the two stations, even without taking into account those such as myself who feel we have outgrown Radio 1 before we have outgrown its target age bracket.

6 Music features a remarkably rich and eclectic range of music, and presenters like Steve Lamacq and Lauren Laverne really know their stuff. And, yes, it’s pretty geeky. If I was being cynical I could say its ideal listener was the main character from Nick Hornby’s High Fidelity. But it you don’t really have to be that well-informed to appreciate being introduced to great music that would never get played on any other station. And it also provides opportunities for new bands to get heard and perhaps break through into the mainstream (as was the case with the now-ubiquitous Florence and the Machine).

I suppose, when it comes down to it, its not just about 6 Music – I take issue with the Strategy Review’s whole message about ‘doing fewer things better.’ What this means is basically neglecting the niche in favour of the mainstream, and this seems to me to go against one of the main things that the BBC stands for. Surely the whole point of the BBC as a public body is that it can do things that a commercial organisation never could – like serving smaller demographics and taking risks with programming? The ‘fewer things’ it chooses to concentrate on will necessarily have to be crowd-pleasing, populist things, similar to what commercial channels and stations provide. If the BBC has no place for eccentrics, then who else will?
Make your feelings known: https://consultations.external.bbc.co.uk/departments/bbc/bbc-strategy-review/consultation/consult_view

Or email: srconsultation@bbc.co.uk

Theatre review: Money, Shunt Collective, Bermondsey St, London, 12th March 2010

For this show, the Shunt Collective has created a vast and highly original set in a warehouse near its Bermondsey Street headquarters. From the outside, it looks vaguely industrial, some huge metal machine with ladders and walkways around the outside. Then, the audience are led through a door and into the interior. They move through a series of rooms and different levels, where the action of the play takes place above, below and all around. The surprises of each different section of the structure and how it is revealed give the piece part of its impact, so I won’t give too many details, but suffice to say that it is about as far as you can get from a traditional proscenium arch theatre.


The reviews that I had read led me to believe that there was no plot whatsoever, but this isn’t strictly true. It is certainly sparse in detail, the dialogue is often absurd and elliptical and there isn’t a conventional narrative. But the play is based on Emile Zola’s novel L’Argent, which was about a real life banking crash in nineteenth century France, and with this in mind it is easy to see the machine as representative of a financial institution. Early on, a man tries to gain entry into a Kafkaesque bureaucratic organisation. Later, the same character, now a big success, reels off meaningless but ever increasing numbers to show how his unspecified enterprise is growing. Another character tells a story about a man who was desperate to buy shares in “this”, she says, with a wave of the arm that takes in the whole set without explaining what it is that is so valuable.

The machine is an apt metaphor for a bloated financial institution – a vast, incomprehensible structure, whose function is unclear, but whose vital importance is never questioned by those who rush around it, endlessly tending to its hissing, groaning pipes and gears. As the numbers on the screens shoot up, it seems ever more unlikely that the structure can take the strain.

In the end, this show is all about the spectacle. Being at the centre of the action is a successful technique because it is so immersive. Every little detail of the set produces satisfying ‘ooo’s of wonder as it is revealed. The sights and sounds and surprises produce a genuine reaction from the audience. It doesn’t play on the emotions in the way that a character-driven drama might, but it provides an intense sensory experience that never allows you to stay a step removed.

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Check out my Comment is Free article: How saying Kathryn Bigelow has made a 'man's film' does female directors no favours.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/mar/11/kathryn-bigelow-women-male-establishment