Posted by Chris Windle (Senior Staff Writer)
Lots of people are getting very upset about the closure of the BBC’s radio station 6 Music. Several hundred disgruntled folk gathered outside Broadcasting House to vent their fury at the weekend assisted by the station’s DJs who, unsurprisingly, are quite supportive of the efforts being made to keep them in work.
If I hadn’t been too busy sitting on my sofa I’d have joined them. Having written about bands the kids are into for Zone’s BT Vision content for the last year I’ve come to appreciate 6 Music’s vibe. But it was raining, so I decided to stay at home with the curtains drawn, surfing the internet.
Then I came across a blog by former cabinet minister James Purnell and quickly lost my self-righteous fervour. There’s nothing quite like a politician climbing into the seat next to you on a bandwagon to make you think twice.
Purnell suggests ditching BBC2’s daytime TV schedule to fund 6 Music, describing it as “pointless”. Like him I’d rather spend an afternoon head-butting a metal pole than watching the stream of property shows and quizzes the BBC sneezes out everyday, but I know someone who loves them, and she’s my grandma.
My grandma isn’t as sprightly as she once was – there’s a chair in her hall so she can have a rest on her way to the front door. She doesn’t get out much, and since her family are either working during the day or living hundreds of miles away, and her friends are even less mobile than her, she rarely has daytime visitors.
For her an afternoon watching Flog It! and Eggheads at window-vibrating decibels is not only pleasurable, it connects her to the outside world. And there are millions of people in a similar boat. Probably, in fact, far more people than listen to 6 Music. So when James Purnell says the BBC’s policy should be dictated “by what licence fee payers want”, he really means, “by what a smallish group of young, mojito-drinking metropolitan-types, like the author of this blog, want”. Isn’t the digital revolution supposed to be for everyone?
Unfortunately for him, my grandma and her mates are still capable of voting and do it in much greater numbers than the youth of today. Which, as an election approaches, might be worth remembering the next time he suggests axing her favourite shows.