The BBC are showing no signs of overturning the controversial decision outlined in the strategy review to close 6 Music, with its listener base of 695,000.

In an interview with Media Guardian on Monday, Andy Parfitt, one of the executives who wrote the review, reiterated there was no chance of saving 6 Music. ”[W]e have to take a longer-term view. It does mean some awful, tough and difficult decisions. It’s hard, [but] nine-odd services was just too many.”

So, apart from an arbitrary cut off point at seven stations, what reasons lie behind 6 Music’s closure? The original review states: “[Six Music's] average listener age of 37 means that it competes head-on for a commercially valuable audience”.

This is a slippery statement. On the one hand, the audience is commercially valuable because they fall in a demographic that is valuable to advertisers. But on the other, it suggests that 6 Music is competing with commercial stations, which is not true. There is no real competition between 6 Music and commercial radio stations, because the content is unique.

As Quidem CEO Steve Orchard said: “Commercial radio can never replicate 6 Music’s cultural value – it’s not viable for us to do so. The commercial landscape has featured many fine rock music stations that have never made any real money – over time we water them down and gently shepherd them back towards the traditional commercial heartland.”

That is to say that the 6 Music average listener would be commercially valuable, if they liked traditional commercial music. But they don’t. So they’re not. So why aren’t the BBC catering for them?

It certainly isn’t about cost. The BBC Trust 2010 Service Review compares the price in pence per listener-hour of the BBC stations. The results?  6 Music, 3.4p/hr, 1Xtra 4.5p/hr and the Asian Network at a whopping 6.9p/hr. Six Music was found to be cheaper than the BBC digital radio average of 3.9 pence per listener-hour.

And it certainly isn’t about reducing its ‘pop music radio’ offering. If that was the priority, Radio 1 sister station 1Xtra, which plays Urban, Hip-Hop, RnB, Dancehall and Garage (or ‘pop’ to the executives) to less than 600,000 listeners, would surely be axed.

Instead, Radio 1 and 1Xtra will deepen penetration. The stations, which already reach about 13 million listeners, are looking to offer more multimedia content. The pledge to do fewer things better is a pledge to deepen market penetration in certain markets. That might equate to better ‘value to the license fee payer’ and look good on paper, but is that the purpose of the BBC?

I think deep down the BBC know they’re being cheeky. So they hid this little self-reflecting gem in the public consultation survey:

“We know that your expectations of the BBC are that it offers something special to you…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.” What, like… 6 Music?

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