So, I've been off ill (again) today. My voice has completely disappeared, and my head feels like i have a woodpecker's nest on the inside. But hey, life goes on. But not, unfortunately, for BBC Asian Network, or BBC 6Music (see what I did there?). So, today goes to the downfall of BBC RADIO.
I do apologise in advance - this could be very biased, and also quite a scathing attack on what the BBC plan to do. Some of you will have heard what the BBC announced today - some of you will have not. So I shall try to explain it all quite briefly.
As part of a reveiw of the BBC, they have decided to close both Asian Network and 6Music, whilst changing Radio 2 so that 50% of the output is just general chat. BBC Radio 7 - a radio station that carries a lot of stuff for kids - will be renamed BBC Radio 4 Extra. If you were a kid, would you talk about Radio 7 with your friends, or Radio 4 Extra?
1Xtra has to fall in line properly with Radio 1 - and more will link in with both stations. 5 Live and 5 Live Sports Extra are being used as examples. The 5 Live stuff ahs worked well, because its easy with sport. One game on one channel, another on the different one. With music, or chat, its completely different.
But no, not just that. Mark Thompson (the imbecile behind all these plans) has decided that for every £1 of the license fee, 90p of that will go towards programming. That now means that the BBC are going to specifically concentrate on the TV side of things - and not on radio and online. They are now a world-renowned media OUTLET, not just a TV company. So why change it?
BBC Blast and BBC Switch will be shut down - so there goes the teen market. Thompson even said that he wants Channel 4 to do more for the teen market than he will. So we'll have Lark Rise to Candleford on every night, whereas E4 will have Glee, and Skins, and all the big teen drama.
Online will be hit quite a bit - as only 10p from each pound will go towards anything over than programming. So that means there will be more jobs for less people - more redundancies, less opportunities etc etc. It just seens a joke.
Eespecially when Thompson is trying now to sell off Television Centre. He builds loads of new buildings, then tries to sell off the most iconic building probably in the history of broadcasting?
Having just spent nearly £2billion on new facilities for news, radio and development, it seems stupid to destroy the radio roster they currently have. If you pay Jonathan Ross £18m over 3 years, and then complain there isn't enough money to keep a successful set of radio stations open, your business model is a failure as it is, and for that reason, I'd like to start the petition here for Mark Thompson (the man who claimed on expenses for a return flight from a holiday for the Ross-Brand scandal) to resign. Twitter me, message me, email me, do whatever you have to do to get this idiot out of the British Broadcasting Corporation.
The preposterous shambles that is the BBC Trust, and the demise of BBC RADIO, you are the Day Dedicatees for Tuesday 2nd March 2010.
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