Music Week joins protest over 6 Music

Music Week added its voice to the chorus of protests over the BBC's plans to close BBC 6 Music today, saying it would be a "huge error" to cut the service, which it described as one of the BBC's "most important and distinctive music stations". The trade title published an open letter of protest "on behalf of the UK music industry" to the BBC director general, Mark Thompson, over plans to close the digital radio station and up the amount of speech content on BBC Radio 2. Music Week said the planned closure and changes to Radio 2 were the BBC's "latest acts to rile the industry" after the axing of BBC1's Top of the Pops . "More than three years after it went off air, the BBC still cannot find a single regular prime-time slot on one of its terrestrial TV channels for a music programme, leaving a massive service gap that no terrestrial commercial broadcaster is filling," the Music Week editor, Paul Williams, said in the letter to Thompson. "The same BBC strategy review that confirmed the plans to close 6 and the BBC Asian Network singles out 'inspiring knowledge, music and culture' as one of the five clear content priorities of the Beeb going forward. "Nowhere more is the BBC fulfilling this priority than on 6, a station that every year provides a platform for many hundreds of artists that would not get a look in on the airwaves if this service did not exist." Williams also took issue with the suggestion in Thompson's strategy review that commercial radio should play the lead role in delivering popular music to the 30 -to 50-year-old demographic. "For many millions of people commercial stations do this very well, but the reasons many millions more of the population turn to the BBC's popular music services is that the commercial sector is not able or willing to delivery what they want," he said. "6 is a prime example of music fans having to look beyond the commercial services to fulfil their music radio listening needs, but then so are Radios 1, 2 and 1Xtra." Williams added: "The report points out that the average age of a 6 listener is 37, which it says means that the station is 'competing head on for a commercially valuable audience'. "But that only makes sense if you assume that what every 37-year-old wants to listen to can be reasonable delivered by the commercial sector. If that were the case then commercial radio would already have its own version of 6, but it does not." Williams was also critical of plans to increase the daytime speech content of Radio 2. He said this "put under threat the very reason why Radio 2 is such a hit with licence payers ... where does this suggested huge reduction in the music output of the UK's most popular music radio station fit with placing music so high in the list of the BBC's content priorities?" • To contact the MediaGuardian news desk email [email protected] or phone 020 3353 3857. For all other inquiries please call the main Guardian switchboard on 020 3353 2000. • If you are writing a comment for publication, please mark clearly "for publication".