It may be scant consolation, but I’ve finally put together a new edition of John Kell Vs Satan, with music by The Pipettes, Captain Hotknives, Kathryn Calder, The New Pornographers and more – plus this edition’s robot-related song, by Frankie Machine.
Click here to download: JKVS20100313
It annoys me that people are tending to refer to “the decision” to close 6 Music – it’s not a decision, it’s a proposal. What we have to do now is ensure the BBC Trust is in a position where it cannot accept that proposal. This means demonstrating the strength of feeling, certainly, but it also means undermining the arguments – such as they are – in favour of closure.
So, below are two draft documents. One is a one-sider that can (after the election) go to MPs or other people to influence; the second is a fuller briefing which can also be used for that, but is also my response to the relevant question in the consultation. I’ll submit it without the numbering and formatting, and add separate answers to all the other questions, not all of which will pertain to 6 Music.
I’m putting these here for two reasons: firstly, to get comments and suggestions on how to improve them; and secondly, as a resource for anyone who wants to make use of the arguments and analysis.
So, here they are – thoughts please.
As promised, more comment about MPs.
There is currently an Early Day Motion in the House of Commons, with a modest 33 signatures (for EDMs anything over 100 is decent, over 150 good, over 200 very good – but this is clearly a very new one, so let’s not judge it by this yet). EDMs are effectively just statements with which the MPs who signs them wish to agree; they carry no formal weight (most are never debated) but can in practice bring a certain amount of political pressure to bear, depending on the issue.
But there will be a general election between now and May 25th, when the BBC Trust’s consultation closes. The current EDM will fall when Parliament is dissolved for the election around the end of this month – so it will only actually be around for another few weeks. Many of the MPs who sign it will not be in Parliament after the election.
It will be more important to have a well-supported EDM in Parliament immediately after the next election: this can provide a focus for the political debate as the BBC Trust undertakes its deliberations from late May onwards. It may be a challenge to find an MP to table this motion and to identify who will be the best MPs to target to sign it (at least one party is bound to be undergoing a post-election period of strife), but new MPs, of whom there will be over 200, may well be willing to sign it (before they’ve had chance to become cynical).
It’s doubly important that the campaign continues strongly at this later stage, as the initial burst of activity we’ve seen over the last couple of days will undoubtedly slacken to some extent. But pressure must be kept up throughout.
The value of engaging MPs will be to make it uncomfortable politically for the Trust to take the decision to close the two stations down. MPs cannot force the Trust not to do this; nor can ministers; but both can add to the Trust’s incentives to reach a sensible decision.
There is a public consultation exercise on the proposed reforms to the BBC. It is open until May 25th, and can be found online here.
At the time of writing the page was running slow and unreliably. But in any case it is worth taking a bit of time to consider responses to the questions before diving in.
To save you ploughing through the survey for a dummy run, here is the questionnaire in full. A free-text box follows all questions.
The BBC’s strategic principles
The Director-General has proposed five high level principles which would set the future direction of the BBC. These are:
The Trust agrees that the BBC should have a set of published principles and, when these are agreed, we will ensure that the BBC is held to account for acheiving them.
Some of the proposed principles are in response to challenges the Trust has set the BBC – such as focussing on high quality programmes and considering whether the current range of services is too large. We endorse these five principles, although we have not agreed to specific proposals in each area.
Do you think these are the right principles?
Should the BBC have any other strategic principles?
Proposed principle: Putting Quality First
We know that you have very high expectations of BBC programmes and services. We also know that most BBC programmes and services meet audience expectations, but that some do not. The Trust will always push the BBC to do better in this respect and we’re keen to know what you think.
Which BBC output do you think could be higher quality?
Offering you something special
The Trust believes that the BBC needs to do more than offer high quality programmes and services.
We know that your expectations of the BBC are that it offers something special to you – something distinctive and better than other broadcasters. For example, the BBC should offer you thoroughly independent and impartial news, it should introduce you to new talent in drama and comedy, and its radio stations should play pop music that other radio stations don’t.
The Trust knows that you think the BBC could do more to be original and different in some areas.
Which areas should the BBC make more distinctive from other broadcasters and media?
The Five Editorial Priorities
The Director-General has proposed that all BBC services should be focussed on some or all of five editorial priorities.
The Director-General’s proposed editorial priorities are:
The Trust thinks that the proposed editorial priorities fit well with those things you have told us are important to you in our previous research, but we want to consider how these priorities should be delivered to you in the future.
Do these priorities fit with your expectations of BBC TV, radio and online services?
Proposed principle: Doing fewer things and doing them better
The Trust believes that BBC must offer the highest quality programming. We have previously told the Director-General that we think that the pursuit of higher quality may mean doing less overall.
The Director-General has proposed a number of areas where the BBC could reduce or stop activities altogether. The suggestions are to:
We can assure you that decisions have not yet been taken on any of these areas and that we will consider each area very carefully before doing so.
We welcome your views on these areas.
Proposed principle: Guaranteeing access to BBC services
The growth of digital technologies and platforms has led to greater choice and convenience for many people in terms of how they receive and consume TV and radio programmes.
Many of the BBC’s TV, radio and online services are now delivered to you in several ways. For example, many BBC radio services are available on AM, FM and DAB radio, digital television and online devices. However, the Trust recognises that some BBC services are still unavailable on the main platforms, such as FM or DAB, in parts of the UK.
The Trust believes that there is a fine balance to be struck here – between giving you the chance to receive BBC services in all the ways and devices you may have and making sure that the BBC doesn’t spend too much on delivering BBC content to you, rather than on the content itself.
If you have particular views on how you expect BBC services to be available to you, please let us know.
The BBC archive
The BBC is always considering ways in which it can make its programmes available to you at no cost. For example, recent TV and radio programmes are already available to you soon after broadcast on the BBC iPlayer.
The Trust is not considering specific proposals from the Director-General in this area at this point, but welcome any views you may have on having access to recently broadcast and to older BBC programming.
Please tell us if you have views on this area.
Proposed principle: Making the licence fee work harder
One of the Trust’s priorities is to ensure that the BBC offers excellent value for money, by being efficient and by making effective use of its income. We think that it is right that you expect this of the BBC.
The Trust welcomes the Director-General’s proposals to ensure that the BBC offers value for money and, specifically, we support the aim to maximise the proportion of the licence fee that is spent on programming. However, we know that there will be more do to, in order to achieve this.
If you are concerned about the BBC’s value for money, please tell us why.
Proposed principle: Setting new boundaries for the BBC
The Trust has asked the Director-General to consider where the BBC could be clearer about the limits to its activities as we know there is considerable demand for this from other broadcasters and media companies and the BBC has a responsibility to consider its competitive impact on others.
The Director-General has set out a list of proposed limits to BBC activity. These are:
The Trust has carried out work in some of these areas already and we support some aspects to these limits: making the BBC’s website focussed and distinctive and setting limits to the BBC’s local media offer.
In many other areas, we recognise there are trade-offs. For example, buying a US drama can mean that viewers are offered a high quality programme at lower cost than would be possible with a new British programme.
The Trust has not taken decisions in any of these areas and we will consider each one very carefully before doing so.
Do you think that the BBC should limit its activities in these areas?
Should any other areas be on this list?
It’s vitally important to work with the grain of the BBC’s own process. Kicking up a fuss online is all well and good – and important to show that there is strength of feeling – but the BBC must not be left the opportunity to say that this strength of feeling was not reflected in its formal consultations.
The first stage in the process appears to be a 12-week consultation, starting today and ending on May 25th. This is not a consultation on the specifics of the closure plans, but on the principles of the strategic review presented by Mark Thompson. Nonetheless, supporters of 6Music and the Asian Network should respond to it:
The Trust’s review is due to publish a provisional report on the BBC’s strategy by the summer and a final strategy in the autumn. Only then is the BBC expected to put formal proposals before the Trust to close 6Music and the Asian Network (it may be that the idea can be killed off even before then).
At that point, further lobbying of the Trust, the Government and MPs must take place.
If the Trust still decides to take th decision to close the stations, it may be possible to take it to judicial review (this will either need c. £100,000 of funding to do it effectively, or some 6Music / Asian Network listeners with legal training an a willingness to do the work pro bono).
If that fails, then will be the time for civil disobedience. But we’re a long way from that yet – this argument is clearly winnable without that.
The proposal to close BBC 6Music and the Asian Network can undoubtedly be stopped by a sustained and sensible campaign. It is manifestly wrong-headed and unjustified, and rational argument backed by sound evidence can show this. The process for shutting the stations will be a long one, so time is on our side.
Here are the key things that, in my view, the campaign needs to do in order to succeed.
1. Concerted grass-roots action
This is well in-hand, with Twitter campaigning, emails to the BBC Trust, the excellent Facebook group and the online petition. The latter will endure, and is the most important of them all: the existing petition should be supported, and the temptation to set up rival petitions must be resisted, as it will split support and undermine all of them (you can’t add up 15,000 supporters on one and 5,000 supporters on another, as it risks doubel-counting and is not credible for that reason).
2. Contact everyone, all at once
The decision will be taken by the Trust, but will be taken in a political context. Trustees, ministers and MPs all need to be contacted, and all need to know that the others are being contacted – everyone with influence must know that if thy don’t do anything, another group is likely to push them into doing something. More on MPs in a separate post.
3. KEEP IT CIVIL!
This is so important. Nobody likes being shouted at, and the people we need to persuade are no different. If they feel they’re on the receiving end of abuse, they will be antagonised and take the calls for 6Music and the Asian Network to be saved far less seriously. Remember the BBC created these stations in the first place: the aim of the campaign is not to beat the BBC about the head, but to save it from making a mistake: the campaign must present itself as supporting the BBC to deliver the high quality public service broadcasting it says it wants to.
Now is not the time to start talking about not paying the licence fee or other civil disobedience: it can seem a powerful threat, but in the eyes of Trustees will almost certainly make you look like a tosser.
4. Make the arguments clearly and rationally, and back them up with evidence
There are only a few key arguments here, perhaps only two.
The first is that no commercial broadcaster caters for, or ever will cater for, the 6Music and Asian Network audiences. This needs to be backed up: playlist comparisons between 6Music on the one hand and Absolute and XFM on the other (these are the most likely stations to be said to be catering for this audience by supporters of the scrapping proposals) – I’ll have a go at this myself later if nobody’s already done it.
The second is that 6Music and the Asian Network are unjustifiably expensive for the audiences they serve. This can easily be rebutted: while their audiences might not be huge, nor are their budgets. Someone on the Facebook group has already calculated that in terms of annual budget spent compared to weekly listener reach, 6Music is considerably cheaper than 1Xtra and Radio 3, and slightly cheaper than Radios 4 and 5Live.
More posts, with more specifics, to follow.
I moved my political posts off this blog to a separate one a good while ago, as they didn’t sit terribly comfortably amid the F1, Doctor Who and indie music. For a while I entertained the idea of launching myself fully into the political blogosphere, but more recently I’ve concluded trying to achieve anything in there is almost certain to be a massive and upsetting waste of time and effort. So the political blog has withered somewhat, but I occasionally put up the odd venting post on there.
Still, I was at the Conservatives’ Spring Forum in Brighton this weekend for work, and it seemed a shame not to offer some non-work-based observations. So here they are.
Conservatives Spring Forum: notes from the conference
Conservatives Spring Forum: what might a Conservative government do?
Conservatives Spring Forum: how might the Conservatives govern?
We’re now two tests into the F1 pre-season, and while making predictions from tests is a complete mug’s game, idle speculation is a massive part of the fun. So, here are some vague and ill-researched observations.
Ferrari and McLaren seem quick and certain to win races. Anything else would be a big shock. That’s where the easy stuff ends.
Red Bull haven’t shown much pace yet, but they’ve only attended one test. I couldn’t quite see the logic of chalking them up as title favourites before the car had turned a wheel, but it would be equally rash – well, very nearly as rash – to write them off now. The Toro Rosso is also an evolution of last year’s Red Bull and therefore seems likely to be decent enough – the real challenge for them may be development over the course of the season.
And of the other big names: Mercedes. Dull-looking car – was it Sniff Petrol who pointed out that you can’t call it “matt silver” and expect people not to realise it’s a GREY CAR? James Allen has reported a rumour that they’ve got the weight distribution slightly wrong and are a bit off front-running pace. Schumacher’s comeback will be a massive anticlimax if he doesn’t win at least one race, won’t it?
Pity Robert Kubica, whose new team looks slow and old team looks fast. Of BMW Sauber (why haven’t they applied to change the name?), two observations. The first is that this was a front-running(ish) team over the last few seasons: be the end of last year they’d made up a lot of ground with what had been a disappointing car, and they had the chance for a title challenge in 2008. It therefore shouldn’t be a surprise to see them going fast, in the upper half of the mid-field or higher. The caveat is that they seem to have no sponsors: they therefore have some incentive to showboat a bit, take fuel out of the car and set misleadingly fast lap times. Prost did it in 2001, giving the impression that a good car was a very good one – is Sauber’s impressive pace so far a bit of a trick?
Renault, meanwhile, haven’t finished at or near the top of any session that I’ve noticed. They seem to be setting respectable times, but nothing more. One has to fear they could be going through a ‘Honda in 2008′ phase, despite the snazzy new livery. Or they could be sandbagging… but from their showing so far they look like a team that will pick up points here and there over the season without threatening the podium.
Things started very badly for Virgin: a front wing failure and installation and set-up laps that left them ten seconds off the pace in their first few days. But more recently they’ve got to within two or three seconds of the pace: OK, they may well be flattering to deceive, but they seem to be setting up a respectable enough platform for a debut season.
What about Williams? Well, quite. Again, they don’t seem to be setting the world on fire, but there’s a lot of positive noise around them online. Impossible to read – it would be lovely to think Rubens could challenge for wins again this year, but there’s no evidence of that so far.
Lotus haven’t turned a wheel yet, and of the two other new teams the latest rumour seems to be that USF1 don’t have a car and neither has the funds. There is, however, a chassis built by Dallara for Campos Meta that supposedly could be raced – whether by Campos or by USF1, if they can buy it, remains to be seen. And then there are the ex-Toyota Stefan GP cars… will they ever be raced?
F1 is already delivering a classic year of pre-season intrigue – alas, with no refuelling I doubt it will offer a classic year of racing, so enjoy the suspense while there still is some!
At the end of his 6Music show this morning, Jon Richardson announced that when he leaves these shores for the Melbourne Comedy Festival in a few weeks’ time, he will have broadcast his final show on 6Music and will not be returning. This was a bit of a shock – he’d mentioned the festival in passing before, but I’d presumed (or at least hoped) that there would be a stand-in for a few shows, and then he’d be back.
Richardson’s show, and before it the show he co-presented with Russell Howard, has been appointment radio for me since soon after it started. Howard was brought into 6Music as a replacement for Russell Brand, who had just moved to Radio 2 (the rest of that story, you know), and initially had two co-presenters: Jon, and Sam Thomas (curious they all had first names as, or in, their surnames), but soon they settled down into a duo. Their arrival coincided almost to the week with me moving into my own flat for the first time, and also buying my first digital radio. The show was the first I really latched on to, particularly for Jon: as a pedantic, sarcastic man from the North West of England he inexplicably struck some sort of chord with me. I must have listened to the show on the majority of Sunday mornings since.
It’s often said that the trick of presenting radio is to speak as if you’re talking to one person, not many; Jon seems to be able to do that fairly instinctively, and whenever he would get into an argument with Russell, it always felt as though he and the listeners were – in the nicest way possible – ganging up on Mr Howard. As well as a fairly reasonable pedantry, Jon also showcased his other traits to good effect: a love of cooking, delight in small pleasures such as Dyson Airblades, and significant but endearing social awkwardness.
He also comes across as a man who in many respects is pretty sorted and comfortable with himself, and has a good perspective on the world: his “good deeds” feature sprung out of his own propensity for doing small but helpful deeds, and he can regularly be heard giving gifts to guests and colleagues on the show. I still have one of his dictums as a favourite quote on my Facebook profile: “When the lights go off and you’re on your own, that’s who you are.” Far from being the pedantic misanthrope Russell Howard would occasionally – jokingly – paint him as, he seems like a genuinely nice bloke who would be deeply embarrassed to read or hear anything of the sort being said about him.
Jon’s now been presenting the show on his own for well over 18 months, since Russell moved on, albeit with support each week from Matt Forde. So after three and a half years in total, it’s understandable that he has decided to move on and do other things – much as I’d have liked to have a few more years of shows to look forward to, I can certainly understand the decision. Perhaps the sitcom he was writing has been picked up – certainly his career trajectory has been going the right way, with appearances on Buzzcocks and Have I Got News For You last year, a regular slot as a team captain on Radio 4 quiz Act Your Age, plus a nomination for the used-to-be-the-Perrier award in Edinburgh.
Whatever he does, I hope he has some channel available for us to keep in touch with him. It’s always a pleasure to spend a few hours in his company on a Sunday morning, and I’ll miss hearing what’s been going on in his world. Moreover, if he’s looking at things from a career perspective, I hope he’ll see value in maintaining a line of communication with his existing fan-base, rather than allowing the support he’s deservedly gathered on 6Music to wither and fade. He has resisted having a website or blog up to now, and left both MySpace and Twitter after short spells on each.
So I wish him well in whatever he does next, look forward to the remaining shows he has on 6Music, and hope that in some form or other he’ll stay in touch.
6 Music: consultation response and policy briefings
March 10, 2010 — John KellHere are PDFs of my consultation response to the BBC and revised versions of the one-side briefing and full-length one. Feel free to borrow / circulate.
Save 6 Music Briefing – One Side
Save 6 Music Briefing Full
20100310 BBC Consultation Response