Wednesday 16 June 2010

Commercial radio says ...

... that 6Music has to be closed because it interferes with their business.

NME Radio, the most similar commercial station to 6Music (the FM commercial stations come from a completely different world), is to disappear from DAB and satellite television and will only be available online.

That went well, didn't it?

A cursory listen - mainly in taxis - to other FM commercial stations reveals that, once again, choice is a neoliberal fiction: a smaller station now thrust into competition with Heart is playing "Lost in Music" and "Fame", pure Heart fodder. Admittedly it only used to play all the 90s ILR standards, "Over My Shoulder" and "Sugar Coated Iceberg" and so on ad infinitum, and yes I know "Lost in Music" is a much better song than any of the Mondeo staples, but even so. I have no great enthusiasm for the daytime output of Radio 2, but to even begin to compare that fairly balanced and varied combination of old and new with its direct competitors is beyond grotesque. The BBC must be wary of Tory blandishments attempting to secure their supposed "heartland" with talk of public service - from Cameronite mouths whose owners don't understand the meaning of the phrase, that only means ghettoisation and marginalisation, and then oblivion.

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