in quality, not quantity
Mark Thompson is personally going to pull the plug on BBC Radio 6 Music. By that I mean he is actually going to do it himself, then he’s going to use a chainsaw to cut up the rest of the studios in BBC’s ‘Western House’, cut up the sound proofing, chainsaw through the mixing desks and blow up the satellite dish on the roof like at the end of ‘They Live’.
Although sad, it’s going to be one hell of a show. It’s been a bit of a story here for the first half of the week but the BBC control the news and by Thursday morning it wasn’t really a story anymore.
I know that a bunch of you are upset and I’m personally worried that Joe of the Adam and Joe show doesn’t try to attempt suicide again - after all the pair of them have never had it so good. Where will Jon Richardson sleep? Has Mark Thompson not though about this? That’s about the limit of my knowledge of 6 Music.
What gets me is this; I can remember since 2002 the BBC have been saying that they want to cut down the amount of programming and focus on the quality. One can only assume that means less dreadful period drama, less Dame Judy Dench, less ‘My Family’ and more Russell T Davis. Since 2002 there have been probably thirty dreadful period dramas, more Dame Judy Dench1, eight more years of ‘My Family’ and some more Russell T Davis - most notably involved the re-imagining of Dr. Who.
How has there been another eight more years of ‘My Family’.
What exactly did we cut? Well they started another two TV channels and they did something about, re-launched the website, created the iPlayer2 and Planet Earth. Didn’t really cut anything then.
What gets me the most is something one of the reporters said on the news which was hastily covered over and ignored. Since the last formal promise the BBC made to cut the fat and concentrate on building muscles we’ve had more of the ‘Strictly Come Dancing’ style shows which don’t even make the Beeb that much money because they don’t sell ad time. On BBC Three we have to deal with shows like ‘Snog, Marry, Avoid’ which is in its third series and now tag teams the “Why don’t they just show more Family Guy” slot at night with the high brow reality show ‘Hotter Than My Daughter’. Need I say more?
I just want to slate Tim Dawson for his sitcom ‘Coming of Age’ which is just gash. It’s already been dubbed as the worst cultural artifact in British history, I don’t know how Fred Barron, creator of ‘My Family’ feels about his show missing out on that most prestigious of awards but I can safely say that Coming is the worst thing I’ve seen on Three ever. Even the weakest episodes of The Mighty Boosh were scores of times better than it, why can’t they just show that over and over. Better than that, just show more Family Guy.
It’s not all bad on Three though, Boosh was great and although it came out of radio3 and before that out of theater but it was most accessible on TV. That £100 million would have taken £24 off everyone’s TV license4 each year for the last eight years that the Asian network and Radio 6 Music have been on air. Or it could have gone to charity.
I don’t know guys, what do you think? I suspect I’ll be happy if a couple of the shows from 6 Music find a home on Radio 1, 2, or even 4 but you can’t keep them all. It just seems that instead of doing something unpopular like cutting a couple of radio stations and taking apart your award winning website you could just do nothing because it seems to have been both successful and unnoticed in the past.
Jon Richardson should have been given Wogan’s job.
Ben