If you like 6 Music then it’s highly probable that you are also a regular listener to Mark Radcliffe and Stuart Maconie’s 8pm show on Radio 2, voted Radio Programme of the Year for 2009 by the Broadcasting Press Guild.
For four nights a week, the duo sprinkle informed banter over new musical passions and forgotten classics and chat to guests who have something to say more often than product to promote.
Naturally, this happy situation cannot be allowed to stand. The BBC has confirmed Beehive’s earlier post that Bob Shennan, the Radio 2 Controller, is to reduce the programme to three nights a week. A regular In Concert feature, once a Radio 1 staple, will be broadcast on Thursday nights instead.
Bruce Dickinson, the Iron Maiden frontman, is to lose his 6 Music Rock show too, although there is no word as to how this distinctive audience will be served on the station, which may suffer death by a 1000 cuts before its closure is even confirmed.
There has been talk of the Radcliffe and Maconie show being “expensive”. Radcliffe, a Sony Radio Gold Award winner, is supposed to be a 5 Live target. The show is broadcast from Manchester and is therefore a shining example of the BBC’s promise to tilt radio production to the regions.
Radio 2′s commitment to live music is admirable although it’s unclear whether In Concert will rely on the BBC archive since a weekly live gig featuring top names would be prohibitively expensive. Fans of Radcliffe and Maconie might ask why the live music show couldn’t find a home on Saturday evening instead?
It’s surely a coincidence that the R&M show is another forum for the kind of new or unfamiliar music, appealing to 30-40 something rock fans, that 6 Music also gives oxygen to.
But as the repositioned R2 struggles under the weight of the new comedy, documentary, live music and over-65 focused jazz programming required to keep the BBC Trust happy, the idea that the “best of 6 Music” can easily be shifted over to this unwieldy behemoth looks more unlikely. One size does not fit all.
****
Tim Davie, BBC Radio supremo, gave an insight into BBC management thinking on Radio 4′s Feedback show. Asked if he would listen to licence-fee payers’ protests over the two digital network closures, he replied, ”No” - he would listen to the Trust’s ruling instead.
The Trust has become a convenient shield to protect BBC managers from listening and responding directly to licence-fee payers. What happens if the Trust, which exists to preserve and support the BBC, is deemed not to have responded adequately to the wishes of that audience?
At the time of writing there is a lot of hype for ‘Your Country Needs You’, the run-up to the Eurovision Song Contest.
They should cut the above as the broadcast of this on Radio 2 usually meant that Stuart Maconie’s ‘Critical List’ show was always taken off!
Now it feels like the Beeb are dancing on a grave, dropping Bruce Dickinson’s 6 Music rock show and cutting down Radcliffe and Maconie’s show on Radio 2.
The R&M show is something R2 should be championing in the current climate, not cutting it back.
I’d say Steve Wright’s slot should be handed to R&M, maybe with a very slightly altered playlist akin to Stuart’s old Saturday afternoon show.
G
this makes it so clear, the suggestion that the best of 6music could move over to 2 was either a)made by someone with no understanding of radio and the direction two is being forced to go in or b) a complete lie.
bosses at radio two are doing the best they can under conflicting pressures so no bad feelings towards them (even if they are cutting back on a great show) . Tim Davie on the other hand is clearly a prat.
radcliffe and maconie’s show is one of the few they could use well to cross promote channels. move the night that’s been cut over to 6? or give the R&M show an extra hour each night on six (ie longer show but split over two stations encouraging radio 2 listeners to discover 6) – surely they should have been playing with ideas like this for years.
if the in concert slot is archive then maybe it could find a home on 6. half an hour of the gig on 2 – gig in full on 6 could work (and only eat into half an hour of R&M) all this would be thinking outside the box and trying to grow 6music. as it is it looks like they are slowly shufffeling the good music off radio 2 and at the same time killing 6music.