BBC 6 Music is worth having a radio
hyperstarsponge
Posts: 16,662 Forum Member
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Its freedom, variety and personality means it the best digital music and one of the good online music stations in this country.
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hyperstarsponge
Posts: 16,662
Comments
6 Music is clearly a station aimed at people who love music and like to listen to it, instead of just having *something* on in the background.
Starting the weekend with a couple of hours of Huey Morgan on Saturday and having a slow Sunday morning cooking breakfast with Cerys Matthews is absolutely unmissable for me.
Oh, and Tom Ravenscroft, Stuart Maconie's Freak Zone, Guy Garvey's Finest Hour and Gilles Peterson!
Because my main radio is FM and if I want to listen to radio I prefer to use it as it is part of my midi system.
Also DAb is to be honest crap and the sound quality even on a decent system is not a patch on FM.
128Mbps in mp2 is not really that good is it, i can tell the difference even on my portable radio if I listen to say Classic FM on dab and the same station on FM.
I must admit I don't know what all the fuss was about when the BBc wanted to close it, there are some good stuff on it, but you got to be selective.
a mate of mine went mad when they was going to close it and joined in with all the stuff that went on to save it and yet, I don't he ever listened to it and i don't think he does now either.
Took me a while to get into it, but I do find it a bit odd sometimes.
For a supposedly music based station there isn't half a load of inane chat on it.
It usually gets better at night.
There is quite some 'chat' on it, correct. It's not a jukebox station. I think the difference is that it's only chat about music, not the weather/inane chat about current events with phone-ins from clueless people/sports/gardening.
Everything centres on music, even the chat. It's no wonder many of the presenters are or were recording artists themselves.
They must be meeting a demand considering their listenership is just under 2 million and slowly growing.
Lose Radio 3 and push 6 onto FM
My next company car choice is based ENTIRELY on the fact that dab is included.
Take today for example: the way mark radcliffe handled the N-word. Jeremy vine would have been left so flustered. Message to bob Shannon: don't change anything!
I've started to think about changing my car and "Must have DAB" is at the very top of my requirements list so that I can get 6 Music and be able to listen to the cricket on TMS. The reception on Radio 4 LW in my current car is abysmal.
Once I change my car I won't own a single analogue radio.
I do find the "witty banter" a pain at work. I now listen to WXPN - great music and good sounding presenters, but little "chat".
There's a million and one stations out there where the presenter hardly says a word, for me the "chat" is like a breath of fresh air, there's humans working on the station!
Yes thats what I found and the music when I did hear it never appealed. Just out of interest I tuned in a few minutes ago and they are playing weird rap music.
I certainly couldn't see what the fuss was about when they wanted to close it.
The weekends are another story and rightly praised. You can almost guarantee to hear something great that you've never heard before. But why should those of us who listen to the radio during the daytime all week have to wait till the weekend to hear good music?
Well, obviously the cost per listener was fairly high. I believe one of the highest of all BBC stations at the time. They don't exactly employ Joe Bloggs to ramble a couple of words into a mic. Also, doing live sets in the studio instead of playing standard top 40s tracks is also relatively expensive.
Ironically, the attention the station got when the BBC considered closure caused a massive spike in listeners. That drastically drove the cost per listener down in a matter of weeks.
Subsequently winning 'UK station of the year' at the Sony Radio Academy Awards in 2012 only increased the awareness.
We might see them reach a new consistent level of over 2 million listeners this year.
I think the speech / music balance is about right.
Again, you have to be into the type of music played on it - and yes there are some gems on it, especially at weekends.
A lot of the programming would have fitted nicely into a relaunched R1 with a different remit and to compensate I would have launched a part funded / part commercial national Top 40 type FM station to fill the gap (yes i know this would take legislation etc)
The only concern i have, is if it gets too popular, will it go a bit too mainstream??