Will the BBC Trust save Radio 6?
Raymond Snoddy says that the BBC Trust has to have the courage to do the right thing and save Radio 6 from a misguided BBC management.
In the next few weeks the BBC Trust will have to decide whether or not to sign the death warrant of Radio 6, a sentence demanded by BBC executives.
The importance of the decision goes far beyond the fate of a particular segment of the popular radio music market or the £9 million the station cost to run last year.
The arguments quickly run into the much deeper waters of whether the BBC should be a smaller organisation or not, the relationship between the Corporation and the commercial radio sector and the future regulation of the BBC.
At a first glance level the Trust would be crazy to close the station as some sort of token sacrifice to those who would seek to dismember the BBC. There is general agreement that Radio 6 is distinctive and plays music that the commercial market does not in general carry.
Publicity surrounding its impending closure boosted ratings from around 600,000 to more than 1 million – a rise in audience that will probably stick because most of the new arrivals would scarcely have been aware before of the station’s existence.
The rise takes care of any crude cost per listener arguments and speaks volumes about how ineffectively the station was promoted in the past.
Jeremy Hunt, now culture secretary, has come out in the past in favour of Radio 6, which would be a sort of informal political permission to save it.
And the opposition to closure has attracted more than 100,000 signatures, including support from famous names such as David Bowie.
The opposition of the RadioCentre, made clear earlier this month, is a little strange. Radio 6 should be closed even though commercial radio provides nothing like it. Instead the station’s distinctive “John Peel legacy” programmes should be broadcast on Radio 1 and Radio 2.
All in all, surely Radio 6 is exactly the sort of radio station that the BBC should be providing, and the real curiosity is why its future now hangs by a thread.
Yet again there is an important, largely structural, counter-veiling argument. The BBC is too big. The BBC has always expanded into every new area of broadcasting development with licence fee money putting a blight on the efforts of the commercial sector. The BBC has never pulled out of anything. Ever.
After all, as commercial radio argued in its response to the BBC Strategy Review, last year commercial radio advertising revenue fell to £480 million while the BBC was able to spend £643 million on radio.
The Trust now has to decide between two passionate lines of argument.
The case for saving Radio 6 is self-evident. The case against goes along the following lines. Issue a reprieve and you are providing the most eloquent evidence possible that the main charge against the BBC is true – that it is incapable of pulling out of any area.
The Corporation’s enemies would have a field day and it would also be proof to some that the BBC Trust is the weak, lily-livered, pointless, hybrid creature they caricature.
The choice need not be so stark. The BBC is also offering to cut back a large chunk of its more “commercial” online presence – a move that is justified.
Although the closure of the Asian Network is unfortunate symbolism, the concentrated geography of Asian settlement in the UK means the need could probably be met by enhanced local radio services in relevant areas.
But apart from that reform at the BBC need not mean closures. It can legitimately be exemplified by cost-cutting and re-allocation of resources and re-calibration of services.
The RadioCentre is on much stronger ground when it argues that Radio 1 should focus more on the teenage and under 25 market while Radio 2 should shift its “lower age limit” from 40 to 45 over the next three years.
Of course there is a wholly unscientific form of radio social engineering at work here but there is absolutely nothing wrong about the BBC making a little more space available for commercial radio short of closures. Being more distinctive fits well with its public purpose, and in the case of Radio 2 there has long been a need for the BBC to do more for its older listeners and viewers, who are among its most loyal supporters.
Local stations that concentrate on being truly local and dedicated to news and documentaries also fit well with what the BBC should be doing, as does paying a large proportion of the cost of extending digital radio.
It is however, a poor, if usually implicit argument, deployed by both commercial radio and television, that somehow the BBC should be hobbled to compensate for falling ad revenues. That way only the public suffers. And anyway a lot of advertising is cyclical and on the way back – if the chancellor hasn’t strangled the recovery at birth.
The BBC Trust now has to have the courage to do the obvious and right thing and save Radio 6 from the clutches of a misguided BBC management.
It should have the courage to face down its detractors and critics rather than falling for the easy, arid, structural, politically correct choice because above all else the Trust should protect the interests of licence payers. It should pursue reform by other means.
If it fails to put the interests of licence payers first then there really would not be much point to the BBC Trust.
(Raymond Snoddy presents BBC Television viewer access programme Newswatch)