The BBC has announced plans for major cutbacks.

It plans, among other things, to axe BBC6 Music and BBC Asian Network among others. Now, although I love the BBC for the way it caters for niche audiences in a way no commercial organisation would, I can see that those would obviously suffer if cutbacks needed to be made.

However, the BBC also plans to cut its internet presence by up to 50%, and that I find alarming. The BBC's websites are excellent value for the licence fee payer with well-informed multimedia content in a whole range of areas. I do hope this does not happen.

The one positive is that the BBC are planning to beef up BBC2 and BBC4, in my view the best channels they offer (altho comedy is going to vanish from BBC4).

Good news for Rupert Friggin Murdoch.

Any views?

www.guardian.co.uk/media/2010/feb/26/bbc-strategic-review

Will we be getting a discount?

Very good news for BBC4; Radio 6 Listeners needs to go though because it doesn't offer anything that the other companies offer.

If they axe 6Music - truly the only station in the UK with any credible claim to represent decent 'new music' in light of R1's 21st Century decline into some ghastly radio version of T4 (where 'new music' has to be landfill indie on a major label or given the ok by utterly dire current incarnation of NME, and anything made before 1999 is banned) - I will lose all respect for the BBC. Independent radio is 99% generic garbage and as such is a lost cause. R2 is an excellent mainstream station but simply cannot cover all bases especially in light of the failings of R1, 6Music is excellent and hampered only by not being available on FM.

BBC4 could be 'beefed up' with very little cost by becoming a 24 station and padding their schedule out with quality repeats of seldom-seen BBC drama and old music shows (TOTP, Whistle Test) that the idiots didn't idiotically wipe and mixing it with the quality they have on now. BBC3 could be improved by simply cutting the crap and adding a degree of quality - we don't need them to ape the abysmal ITV's 2 & 3.

there's a petition for anyone who wants to sign it:

www.avaaz.org/en/save_the_bbc/?vl

I must admit - thank God Switch has gone (awful awful awful)... I've never bothered to listen to 6 Music, assuming it was similar to dear Peely who I listened to dutifully but 99% of the stuff he played was crap; just every now and then there was a gem nobody else touched (Cubans).

Too much choice is the problem. You are always going to find that some products get left on the shelf as consumers don't need them.
I'm fed up with the BBC's obsession with DAB which is overhyped in its sound quality and now usurped by DAB+ which renders older DAB radios obselete as they cannot get new radio stations. Many stations jumped on the bandwagon of DAB but found they could afford to broadcast on it. I cannot receive half the stations advertised on the side of the DAB radio boxes either.

they do keep saying 6 Music only has 3/4 million listeners- but the BBC have not exactly pushed the station, and it does not have an FM frequency either. Give it a chance.

BBC 4 is by far and away the very best channel. Yes, I want it to start before 7pm. I want it to be bigger and even better. I want more live concerts, more in depth news reporting, more new drama, and wall to wall coverage of the Proms and the Edinburgh festival and the like.

It is already a phenomenally good channel...the idents...the programmes, everything.

But I do have a hunger for more...

I'd like BBC4's output on BBC2. Call me old-fashioned but I still think that should be what BBC2, as a public service broadcaster, is there to (try to) do. The fast-improving Sky Arts shows that a commercial channel can now aim for the kind of audience that BBC4 seeks to attract.

I love both BBC2 and BBC4. In fact, I'd be quite happy if they were the only channels on my tv.

I'd love to know what other stations play the same music as 6 Music does? It is an oasis in a sea of corporate blandness.

Radio 1 has too many kiddies TV presenters masquerading as DJ's so consquently every track is "Amazing!" Fearne Cotton should be shot for crimes against music.

Radio 2 is okay in parts but you can't listen to it all day.

The commercial stations are all crap with all the same songs on constant repeat.

But hey, as I'm in a minority of people who like 6 Music then surely they must keep it to cater for our needs?

Get rid of the irritant that is Chris Evans. Problem solved.

Thinking about this earlier today moved me to reach for a dusty volume I have that contains a so-called 'Lunchtime Lecture' about the newly-launched Radio One that Robin Scott gave - to insiders at the Beeb - on 11 October 1967. I picked it off the shelf because I remembered a similar lecture given by David Attenborough about BBC2 that was clear, honest and constructive about what that channel was aiming to achieve. The Scott lecture, alas, just confirmed the suspicion I guess we've all harboured about Radio One - it's never known what it really wants to be, only knowing what it doesn't want (or dares?) to be. I'd quote a passage or two here but none of it IS quotable. It just rambles on, rather apologetically, reassuring people that it won't be like the pirates or American channels or anything else that anyone doesn't want it to be. Maybe it should adopt BBC6 as a belated template? It's about time it tries to be SOMETHING.

JK (and anyone else) - if you aren't familiar with the under-promoted 6music please give it a go.
I find it absurd the BBC is making out their new mandate is all about "quality not quanitity" and then attempting to wield the axe of THE quality station. It isn't all "John Peel" it is an eclectic and tasteful mix of the new and old - music you won't hear elsewhere especially on any commercial station.

Apologies for drifting off a bit at a tangent, but the BBC should also find somewhere to repeat all the 'Walter's Weekly' shows - criminally undervalued programmes that mixed the likes of William S Burroughs with Ian Dury and Glen Baxter. That's the kind of imaginative and witty show that someone should be trying to make now. Preferably after luring Vernon Kay out of BH and changing the locks.

http://www.radiohead.com/deadairspace/index.php?c=551


Mark Thompson, Herr Director General of the BBC, announced yesterday that 6 music was to be closed ... which is obviously a ludicrous decision for those who actually love hearing great music on the radio ... so I've written to the BBC Trust, who apparently have the ability to reverse the decision, and if you feel this way inclined the link is consultations.external.bbc.co.uk/departm...ltation/consult_view
Here's what I wrote:

To whom it may concern,

I am writing regarding the news today that 6 Music is going to be closed, in the hope that you reconsider this decision. To be honest I, along with a vast number of other musicians, music industry types and real music fans, are completely shocked and baffled by this news. I wonder if those who made this decision are actually aware of the hugely important role that 6 music plays in fostering and promoting new bands, as well as still playing the likes of the band that I am in. It literally is the radio lifeblood for music outside of the mainstream. Not to denigrate Radio's 1 and 2, but it really is the only station that puts music first, and that's from a punters point of view and not some bloke in a band. Nowhere else can you hear an archived session track from T Rex juxtaposed next to Midlake's latest release. As David Bowie, put it ... it keeps the spirit of John Peel alive.

Please realise the impact and severity of closing this station down. It will be a huge blow for new bands and their labels. It's not enough to 'refocus' Radio's 1 and 2 as 6 music does a very specific thing. What you have with 6 Music is a gem of a radio station, it is doing what no other station in the world does or can possibly do. Remember it is also still relatively young, give it time. You also finally have a fantastic and seemingly settled line up of DJ's. Please get behind it and from what I can gather about it's annual budget of £6m, it surely punches way above it's weight in terms of cultural relevance and importance.

Thank you for considering this.

Ed O'Brien (Radiohead)