BBC’s director general, Mark Thompson, looking for places to save costs, is thinking about shutting down Alternative-formatted digital Radio 6, a contemplated move that has the UK musical community up in arms.
According to UK’s Times Online, representatives of the music industry fired off a letter to Thompson expressing their “surprise and alarm” at the proposal.
The station is seen as vital for emerging talent that is unlikely to get on the playlist at BBC’s Radio 1 and similarly-formatted commercial competitors.
It comes a few years after the shuttering of BBC’s Tops of the Pops, another move that was deemed detrimental to the musical community. That took place back in 2006.
According to the report, BBC spends about 6M pounds annually on the station to service about 700K weekly listeners. Thompson is said to believe that it doesn’t add up to a value proposition and believes that the commercial sector should take a stab at a similar format.
RBR-TVBR observation: Seems like there is no love for radio here in the States, but across the pond it appears that somebody understands the value of radio when it comes to marketing music.
