After 9 months in gestation, the BBC Trust’s long-awaited reported into Radio 2 and 6 Music will have been music to the ears of RadioCentre, the body representing commercial radio.
Neatly distilling RadioCentre’s submission, Radio 2 must become less popular by appealing to the over-65s while 6 Music needs to increase its audience but without any increase to its modest funding.
The report, which largely overlooks that these are essentially music stations with many different genres and tribes to cater for, centres on “distinctiveness”. R2 needs more of it. Well Chris Evans and the soon to depart Jonathan Ross are both “distinctive”, like ‘em or not. And Jeremy Vine’s prime-time smart chat and music show isn’t replicated on any commercial station.
But if Radio 2 is to return to evening organ music from Blackpool Tower that should be good news for 6 Music, which could fill the John Peel-shaped gap by Radio 1′s drive to hit a teen audience both in daytime and its once older-skewed evening schedule.
Unfortunately the Trust report makes it more likely the service will close, disenfranchising a growing audience of 650,000 listeners. Although approving the concept of an “alternative music” station, 6 doesn’t have enough listeners to “punch through”. The station must cut out Lamb and Bacon – George Lamb and Richard Bacon – and showcase more presenters with musical credibility like Guy Garvey of Elbow and Jarvis Cocker.
This would require a programming and marketing push but the £6 million a-year 6 must “grow its reach without increasing costs.” There has been no statement from Tim Davie, BBC radio supremo, endorsing 6′s future. Presenters have been privately told that its future is 50/50.
The BBC could push the most “distinctive” elements of the 6 schedule onto Radio 1 and 2 late into the evening and sell a cost saving closure to politicians. Alternatively, they could examine the cost/audience ratio of its other digital stations like the Asian Network and 1Xtra. Or might that prove a little too politically sensitive?
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Martin Scorsese and Robert De Niro are said to be considering making a sequel to their hit 1976 movie Taxi Driver. Could this be the project to shake De Niro out of the lazy cameos and dreadful, gurning comedy roles, he has wasted much of the last 20 years on? Probably best to leave Travis Bickle to posterity.
