In Praise of 6Music (please bring me evenings and weekends)

6Music is a strange beast and a station that may not be long for this world.

I am at work during the weekdays and the nature of my job makes radio listening not very practical, so I'm really an evenings and weekends listener: mostly that means approx 7pm til midnight weekdays (depending on what's on TV) which is generally Marc Riley, Gideon Coe and Tom Robinson, and at the weekends occasionally Adam and Joe on Saturday mornings, but mostly the Sunday run through of Jon Richardson, paying limited attention to the Music Week [which generally annoys me] but clinging on for the Huey Show, Jarvis Cocker and Stuart Maconie's Freak Zone.

I love these programmes, and part of the reason we keep a diary in the kitchen at home, where we do most of our radio listening, is because it lets us jot down info on new tracks played that we then hunt down (eMusic and visits to Rough Trade mostly). We have discovered LOTS of new music this way and between George and 6Music I would say the two are responsible for probably 90% of the artistes we get into that we hadn't already heard of.

Which makes me VERY sad indeed that 6Music may soon be lost because the very bits of it we love are exactly the bits ill served elsewhere, either because the presenters would not be easily accommodated OR even more frustratingly because the nature of what they do/play would struggle to be included.

Which makes me VERY sad indeed that 6Music may soon be lost because the very bits of it we love are exactly the bits ill served elsewhere, either because the presenters would not be easily accommodated OR even more frustratingly because the nature of what they do/play would struggle to be included.

• Where would Radios 1 or 2 include the sort of live sessions that Riley and Robinson specialise in? Especially given the wide range of music styles they include...
• Where would would the extended extracts from live performances be included that Gideon Coe so often presents? Let alone his magnificent duffing (you have to be a listener to get that)
• The Huey Show is a rare beast to include music from the 1920s right through to today, with a wide diversity of genres covered as well. And Jarvis's meliflous tones - a wonderful new addition to the 6Music roster - bring not just great music but also lengthy doses of literature as well (such a great voice).

During the day, I accept 6Music may be hard to distinguish from Radio 2, which itself is an even stranger beast partially stuck feeding its aged audience of 'Light programme' listeners alongside collected masses of "cannot-cope-with-Radio-1-anymore, but-I-grew-up-on-punk, the-1980s, and-1990s-indie".

I'm therefore a bit fuzzy on the point of Radio 2, whch seems to be (kinda) abandoning its old audience but it can't quite work out where its audience stops and starts in terms of overlapping with Radio 1 (though it does increasingly seem that if you like anything older than chart music from 3 years ago, Radio 1 is probably not for you and Radio 2 will have to do).

But this really does not help address the problem of 6Music which I think has a very particular sort of audience it caters for and which is not really supported by other stations (and utterly not so in the commercial sector). What could replace 6Music - at least those bits of it I see as unique and worth preserving - is actually not even 'radio' at all in its traditional sense. Instead, it would probably be provided via digital music online: the likes of Spotify etc. But I happen to not only like the music that 6Music introduces me to, but also its presenters and the passion and interest they show in the music they play. And where could I get them...?

NB: hat-tip to Skuds for the blog post title