The saving of BBC 6 Music

When 6Music was under fire I wrote this...

Growing up there was very little for me on the radio. I didn't listen to chart music or "pop music" and the radio was just something that my parents had on, filling up silences. Music was discovered through friends, the music press and taking a punt on an interesting band-name or eye-catching sleeve in a record shop.

In my late 70s/early80s metal period I was gifted with two hours a week on a Friday night, and through my more eclectic 80s and 90s I had Peel for a couple of hours a night during the week. But there was no radio station I could just pop on for an hour or two while I worked or washed up.

I have such admiration for the BBC I adore that there is an institution that doesn't need to cater for lowest-common-denominator, that doesn't need to kowtow to advertisers. I adore that Radio 3 exists, not because I listen to it a great deal, but because I know that without it there would be a huge hole in British culture that wouldn't be filled anywhere else. But for all that admiration for many years BBC radio never catered for me.

BBC 6Music changed that. At last there was something that my license fee gave back to me. A station that exposed me to music I didn't know but might love, music that I already loved but never heard on the radio and wished more people would get to hear, and music that I would never have dreamed of trying out.

Whether it's with daytime shows like Lauren Laverne or Steve Lamacq or the specialist shows like The Freak Zone or The Friday Rock Show 6Music has become such an important part of my life and to even consider taking it away makes no sense at all.

The BBC should be proud of what it does not embarrassed that hasn't achieved some arbitrary version of 'success' - 6Music is not something I can get anywhere else.