So, this is most likely a big fuss about nothing. In fact, a cynic might suggest that this whole controversy over whether or not Kele Okereke is still Bloc Party’s frontman or not was some kind of carefully crafted PR stunt. But that cynic would be an idiot, because nothing about this seems careful at all, let alone crafted.

This story begins on 27 Dec last year, when a picture was posted to Bloc Party’s official Twitter profile showing all four members together (with a dog who had hitherto not been part of the band and has not been mentioned since). As people tried to decipher the cryptic message that was attached to the picture – “Merry Christmas from the Bloc” – experts all agreed that this meant that the band were definitely about to break the hiatus they had begun in 2009.

It looked more like that was a correct assessment in March, when Ash frontman Tim Wheeler told The Sun that Bloc Party guitarist Russell Lissack, who had been moonlighting with the band for about a year, was leaving. No one said he was leaving to rejoin Bloc Party, but hopes were raised further.

And those hopes were fulfilled the following month when Lissack confirmed that there was new Bloc Party material on the way. He told NME: “We met up at Christmas … and talked about doing another record. Kele and I started working on Bloc Party stuff together and separately. We’re having a bit of a break until the festivals are over, because people have commitments during the summer, but we’re going to get back properly in September and sit in a rehearsal studio to work on new band material”.

Bang! There you go, it’s happening. Definitely happening. Definitely. Except that come September, Okereke announced not that he was going into the studio with Bloc Party, but that he had already recorded a new solo EP and would be releasing it in October. Not very much about that would suggest he was about to start working with his bandmates on new Bloc Party material.

So, the obvious question came a few weeks later when he was interviewed by NME – what’s going on? “I was actually having lunch about three weeks ago, just here on Eighth Avenue and I saw somebody walk past and I recognised the haircut”, he said. “It was Russell. I was like: ‘Hey!’ but he didn’t see me and I followed him around the corner and then I saw Matt, Gordon and Russell [ie all his bandmates] all standing outside this rehearsal space. They all went inside”.

He added: “I hope I haven’t been fired. I don’t really know what’s going on, because we haven’t really spoken recently and I’m a bit too scared to ask”.

Asked to comment on Okereke’s remarks on Twitter, Lissack said: “I expect they [NME] will be announcing the auditions soon”. At the time, most took this to be a sarcastic comment, though a week later that is exactly what happened. Well, sort of.

In an interview with the music weekly, the guitarist said: “It’s not really a secret because Kele’s been pretty busy doing solo stuff and it looks like he’s going to be doing that a bit longer. The other three of us wanted to meet up and make music. We were talking about just doing an instrumental thing, but now we might get a singer as well, to properly put some music out and play some shows”.

Confirming that there had been no contact with the band’s former frontman, he added: “I haven’t spoken to Kele for a couple of months, I guess since the festivals when I was doing stuff with Ash. But there’s no bad vibes”.

That’s right, Lissack returned to Ash as well. Who’s the real bad guy here? It doesn’t really matter, the story was broken – Kele Okereke is being replaced as the frontman of the band he co-founded and that made him famous. His bandmates planned to carry on without the very man that many would probably see as their key member. Shocking news.

Of course, Lissack never actually said that Okereke was out of the band. Actually, saying “Kele’s been pretty busy doing solo stuff and it looks like he’s going to be doing that a bit longer” would more likely suggest that Lissack expected Okereke to come back at some point. But whatever, it did seem that the other members of Bloc Party were planning to do something without him.

Commenting on the NME story, Okereke wrote on his blog: “Hmm, I don’t know what to make of this. A big part of me is laughing HARD at all of this but another part of me is all like WTF? I’m quite curious as to what a Bloc Party audition would be like? I wonder if they would let me sit on the panel so I could be a judge Tyra Banks style?”

Maybe he could, that sounds like fun. And reality TV shows have been created on flimsier premises. Plus it would be fine, because Okereke is actually still a member of the band. We know this because Si White, who co-manages both Bloc Party and Kele’s solo career, tweeted on Wednesday: “For those that keep asking, Bloc Party’s membership consists of the same four people it has consisted of since 2003″.

To confirm, those people are Russell Lissack, Gordon Moakes, Matt Tong… and Kele Okereke.

The same day, the Bloc Party website was insisting that “Bloc Party is still Bloc Party”. Although that does tell us less about the current line-up. I mean, The Sugababes are apparently still The Sugababes, aren’t they?

But I think what’s happened here is simple confusion has allowed this story to run out of control. Back in April when he announced that the band were planning to work on new material, Lissack also said: “I’ve really missed playing some of our songs again. The time away has really just reignited the passion I have for Bloc Party”.

The real story, the story it’s somehow taken over 1000 words to get to, is that three quarters of Bloc Party are planning to do something together that might be quite cool, but which will ultimately be something of a side project while they wait to get back to work properly once Kele is available. They probably should have let Kele know this though.

But anyway, narked that they are being accused of making up the whole thing, the folks at NME have released the audio of their recent interviews with Okereke and Lissack conducted by writer Dan Smith, so you can make your own mind up.

Kele:

Russell:

I say that like we have a proper office up here; as ThreeWeeks is only active in Edinburgh for four weeks of the year, during the Festival, the publication operates from a temporary office which is hosted in a different building each year.

Currently, I’m sat in a cordoned off corner of a hotel bar, which is also being used as a backstage area for the two theatre venues that have sprung up in the north wing of the Carlton Hotel. Like our office, these venues will only be here until the end of this month, then the rooms they are in will go back to being function suites for conferences and weddings as if nothing ever happened.

But right now, it is all happening. Edinburgh is overrun with comedians, actors, musicians, dancers, pretty much every sort of performer you could care to think of. As the city’s traditional venues fill up, shows spill out into any room available. Over 20,000 performers and 2500 shows are filling over 200 venues – makeshift or otherwise. It’s all very uplifting and exciting.

It’s a very different scene to what I left behind in London, where I spent Monday afternoon distracted by images on live TV of looting, cars burning and riot police right outside my flat. It was scary not knowing what I would be going back to in a few hours. Actually, I wasn’t even sure at that stage that I’d be able to go back at all that night.

When I walked home at about 8pm the trouble had moved (slightly) further up the road and had been contained by police. All that was left was an eerie feeling, as I walked through an area usually vibrant and full of life, but instead quiet, with most shops shuttered, windows of others smashed, an abandoned bus I’d earlier watched being attacked (again on live TV), and rubbish bins strewn around the road.

Businesses around me have been destroyed, some permanently, and I wait to see when I return to London what long term effect it will have on local people. Instinctively I think it will return to normal, at least on the surface. But I hope that the issues that brought us to this situation are addressed. Simply writing it off as “pure criminality” is not enough. People don’t just become criminals en masse all of a sudden.

It’s right to be angry at the perpetrators of this. There has been destruction on a massive scale, and the targets have been indiscriminate – from corner shop owners who have lost their livelihoods to over 150 independent record labels who lost their entire stocks of CDs and vinyl when a major distribution centre was burned down.

But whatever you think of the people who have been out on the street destroying and looting since Saturday, this week has certainly been a marker. A turning point, perhaps. Or perhaps not. When David Cameron stands up and says: “Young people smashing windows and carrying away televisions is not about inequality”, it doesn’t fill me with a great deal of hope that he has at any point asked why all this might actually have happened.

People will be prosecuted. People should be prosecuted. But if that’s all that happens and our leaders aren’t asking “Why?”, then there’s every chance this will all happen again. Having a completely unshakable answer to something is rarely a good thing.

Originally published in CMU

Obviously, writing about music and the people involved in it means that I often write about death. On my birthday last year I started the day with the less than brilliant task of writing an obituary about Frank Sidebottom, and I’ve written countless other such retrospectives and news stories about the passing of musicians and music industry figures over the years.

But writing about death is one thing, it’s the initial discovery that is usually the most affecting moment. In the case of Amy Winehouse (and this is something I’m slightly reticent to admit, being someone who is supposed to be on top of the news at all times), I learned of her passing via a text from my mum.

I was at ATP’s Portishead-curated I’ll Be Your Mirror festival in London. I’d stopped my incessant checking of Twitter and RSS feeds for an hour, in which time the news had broken. It reached me in four words: “Amy Winehouse is dead”. That was pretty much all the news there was, but it seemed like a lot to take in all at once. Usually there’s at least some time spent trying to confirm if it’s true or not, which eases you into it. This seemed so very definite.

Actually, I was surprised how hard it hit me. I found it more upsetting than the average death of a celebrity I’d never met. I still find it quite upsetting. I think it was partly because I’d always thought she would one day overcome her addictions and make a big comeback. But also, I think it was just because I always kinda liked her. She was funny. And that was the real tragedy; she was both talented and likeable, but became as well, or perhaps more, known for her drink and drug use.

That said, unlike many casualties of rock n roll, her music did prevail. She never got to the stage, I don’t think, where people were going to her gigs just to see a car crash. Audiences weren’t, unlike many who went to see Babyshambles at their ‘peak’, just being voyeuristic. People wanted her to perform, and perform well.

But, of course, there was plenty of voyeurism going on outside her shows. When I first joined CMU in 2008, she was pretty much a daily fixture in the tabloids. She was never that far from CMU, either. It would be wrong of me to suggest we’d been holier than thou when it came to covering her troubled personal life, and particularly her marriage to Blake Fielder-Civil.

With that in mind, you might find the rest of this a bit hypocritical, but I’ve written before about how uncomfortable a lot of the media’s coverage of death makes me feel. Especially when there are unanswered questions. The rush to find answers to such questions in these days of 24 hour rolling news often overtakes the reality of the situation.

Like many last Friday afternoon, I was glued to BBC News coverage of the terrorist attack in Norway. At that point, the horrific massacre of 69 young people was still unknown and the focus was the bomb that had gone off in the government building in Oslo. The explosion had happened less than two hours previously and yet BBC reporters continually asked people caught up in it if they were still in shock. Unsurprisingly, they all were.

Then a government spokesman was interviewed, and quizzed on who he thought was responsible and what sort of bomb it was. Questions he was clearly not going to be able to answer, and thankfully he didn’t attempt to, merely pointing out that the dust hadn’t yet settled and they were still trying to help survivors. Sometimes I wish 24 news channels would switch off when it was clear there’s not actually anything to say.

I’m not trying to draw any comparison between the attack itself and Amy Winehouse’s death, but there was a similarity in the way we grabbed for answers where there were none. To some extent, this is understandable. We’re a curious bunch. But as soon as it was announced that Amy had died, the quest to find out how was on. Speculation was rife, and many media outlets seemed happy to report on any rumour going. But the fact is, we don’t know what happened, and won’t know for sure for at least another month, as a postmortem was inconclusive. Until the results of toxicology and histology tests there will be no answers.

At least, I suppose, that speculation sticks to the topic in hand. It has perhaps been more shocking to see how many websites were comfortable using Amy Winehouse’s death as a means of drawing in Google-searchers to boost web statistics. Websites whose remit does not stretch to the death of a pop star – technology websites revealing that people are talking about her on Twitter, the blog of a men’s magazine publishing a critique of Blake Fielder-Civil’s fashion sense, and (most amazingly) a look at what small business owners can learn from Winehouse’s death.

Reporting on speculation and drifting out of remit is something we’re all prone to do, of course. CMU does it a lot. But we have become a society that craves content and information in greater and greater quantities. We want to own more music than we can listen to in our lifetime, we want news to be constant. I’m as guilty of this as anybody. Shit, I’ve made it my living. But sometimes, I think, a little restraint goes a long way.

Remember, sometimes less is more, and with that in mind I think the NME should be commended for its excellent cover this week.

Originally published on CMU, here.

Of course, the News Of The World phone hacking scandal is not new, the story has been rumbling on for years now. Illegal practices have been uncovered, people have gone to jail, and David Cameron’s own press secretary lost his job along the way, thanks to his involvement. But until this week, the story was largely ignored by the mainstream press. Only The Guardian and Private Eye really gave it any time.

The Guardian, in fact, mercilessly followed the story when all around them were saying to give it up. There have been various points along the way when the journalists working on uncovering the shady practices at the News Of The World, while under the leadership of Rebekah Brooks and the aforementioned former Tory spindoctor Andy Coulson, must have thought the rest of the media would join them. Though I think it’s fair to say they’d never have expected that, when that moment finally happened, it would turn out quite like this. But still, at least they’ve finally been completely vindicated for their persistence.

As someone who works in the media, but at a remove from the action of this story, it’s been fascinating to observe. From the emergence of the information that would rally both the other media and the wider public to the story – the hacking of the mobile phone of murdered teenager Milly Dowler – to the closure of the News Of The World yesterday, this story has continued to throw up new and amazing details with no sign of a dip as yet.

There’s still plenty more come. Coulson was arrested this morning, just after David Cameron had issued a speech about the former NOTW editor’s failed “second chance”, it remains to be seen if he’s charged, and what impact that has on the PM. Rebekah Brooks remains in charge of News International, despite her involvement in this scandal (or lack of involvement – as editor at the time of the Milly Dowler hack, both are unforgivable), but for how much longer? And what about the Met, there are huge questions about police corruption that still need answering. Plus, of course, us in the media are especially interested to see how long News International will leave it before launching the Sunday edition of The Sun (a logistical merger of NOTW with its sister title having already been in the pipeline).

News International’s response to all this has been, and still is, fascinating to watch. Not least as it’s all kicked off just as the government was about to approve the takeover by News International owners, Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp, of the whole of BSkyB, a decision now delayed. Such is the commercial and political power of the Murdoch family and their company, never before have they faced such scrutiny and unanimous backlash. And they were clearly completely unprepared for the assault. Interviews given by Simon Greenberg, News International’s Director Of Corporate Affairs, are testament to that.

One of my favourite moments from this week was Greenberg’s interview with Jon Snow on Channel 4 on Tuesday, just after things started to kick off. Coming shortly after Ed Miliband’s embarassing looping interview, in which he repeated the same answer again and again in response to questions on public sector strikes, News International’s man on the ground proves it’s not as easy as it looks to blindly state the agreed PR line.

I played clips of Cramm by Three Trapped Tigers, whose brilliant debut album is out next week, and Bridges by Fallulah, in honour of my trip to SPOT Festival in her home country Denmark, where I’m writing this from now. I also played Push It Away by Seerauber Jenny in full, which is a track I first heard as a demo years ago, before it was spruced up by Mint Royale’s Neil Claxton.

You can hear me jabbering on via the iPlayer until 3rd June, here. You’ll find me an hour and 23 minutes in, but I’d recommend listening to the whole show; it was a Nick Cave special and the whole playlist is excellent.

The show aims to merge different digital media, and amongst various ongoing channels is an excellent blog, which I was also asked to contribute to. For that, I selected what I think are the three music industry news stories people on the street need to know about (or at least might be interested in). You can read that here.

Having watched Jeremy Paxman’s only slightly fawning interview with Noam Chomsky on Tuesday night, I was eager to see him let loose on Jim Davidson; someone you could say is a bit of an easy target. After all, the only reason he was on the show was because he’s written and is starring in a play about a washed up racist comedian who sees the error of his ways.

OK, the interview was only short, so there wasn’t time to get into the real nitty gritty of the complex issues surrounding a man who is still largely thought of as a ‘racist comedian’, even though he claims not to have told a racist joke for 20 years. But Paxman let him get away with claiming that racism is no longer a problem in the UK, using the classic racists’ justification phrase “all my black friends” and contradicting himself several times.

Comedy has to have a victim, Davidson said, and in picking people from other races as the victims in his comedy, he was merely celebrating British multiculturalism. He also said that he would have stopped telling racist jokes had people stopped coming to his shows, but then only for financial reasons. And although once during the conversation Paxman told him to stop plugging his play, it was hard to see why else he was there.

Change a few key words in this critique of the Davidson ‘Newsnight’ interview and you’d pretty much come up with what you’d expect an interview with David Cameron on ‘The One Show’ to be like – upbeat and without substance, save for a few superficial nods towards real issues.

And, actually, that was exactly how the Prime Minister’s interview with the BBC’s early evening magazine show on Tuesday went, for the most part. Presumably that’s why Cameron chose to appear on it, under the guise of getting his message out to ‘real’ people, rather than going somewhere he might be asked tricky questions. But credit to former ‘Blue Peter’ presenter Matt Baker, who managed to slip one in.

Right at the end of the interview, and the end of the show, Baker offered one final question: “How on earth do you sleep at night?”

Co-presenter Alex Jones’ sharp intake of breath followed by Cameron’s hastily thought up tips for getting a good night’s sleep have made the clip below one of the highlights of my week. Now Baker’s got a taste for putting the wind up people, I hope he makes a habit of it. And that ‘The One Show’ book Davidson for an interview with him.

Believe it or not, I wrote this for music business website CMU. Oh yes, I did. Click here if you don’t believe me.

We all know Simon Cowell as the world’s harshest talent show judge, but he has worked for many years in the music industry to gain that position. He started out in the late 70s working in the mail room at EMI Music Publishing, where his father was an executive, before becoming an assistant to one of the company’s A&R men. Not long after this he set up his first record company, Fanfare Records, which released a number of hit records, most notably by the singer Sinitta, who later became Cowell’s fiancé too, although they split up before actually tying the knot.

In 1989, he became an A&R consultant for BMG, and throughout the nineties signed a huge number of artists who, while perhaps not always particularly credible, went on to sell millions of records.

Then, in 2002, he formed Syco, the entertainment company responsible for, of course, ‘X Factor’, as well as Cowell’s numerous other hit TV shows. In 2006, Cowell claimed that, despite only employing 14 people, Syco was responsible for 40% of its parent company, Sony Music (UK)’s profits.

But, come on, enough of all this talk, let’s have some cold, hard facts. What has Simon Cowell really done? Well, here are five number one singles that were, for better or worse, all down to Simon Cowell.

Five – Keep On Movin’
Created by the same team as the Spice Girls and signed by Cowell in 1997, Five (or 5ive) launched their career when they featured on a TV show about nasty neighbours. Bad boy status achieved, they quickly followed it up with chart success too. ‘Keep On Movin’, the third single from their second album, was their first number one.

Westlife – Swear It Again
Westlife have never tried to cultivate a bad boy reputation, which may or may not have contributed to them reaching number one in the singles charts no less than 14 times. Managed by Cowell’s ‘X Factor’ judging buddy Louis Walsh, the group started as they intended to go on by reaching the top with their debut single, ‘Swear It Again’.

Robson & Jerome – Unchained Melody
Robson Green and Jerome Flynn’s characters performed ‘Unchained Melody’ in an episode of TV’s ‘Soldier Soldier’. Cowell convinced them (under duress, if the stories are to be believed) to record it as a single, and by the following year the duo had released three singles and two albums, all of which went to number one.

Teletubbies – Teletubbies Say ‘Eh-Oh!’
Continuing his run of turning TV stars into pop stars, Cowell signed up the latest kids TV sensation the Teletubbies in 1997, hoping to get the Christmas number one. The Spice Girls beat them to that particular accolade, but they did reach the top of the charts for two weeks in the run up to the festive period.

Leona Lewis – Bleeding In Love
Of course, now Cowell is best know for turning ordinary people into TV stars before turning them into pop stars. There’s no doubt that his biggest success in this area is 2006 ‘X Factor’ winner Leona Lewis, who he hid away for a year before unleashing her into the world again with this single, which went straight to number one in 12 countries.

Taking what he said completely out of context, he labelled the entire population of China a “sub-species”, thus re-opening the debate about whether or not he’s a racist.

The, at the very least, misjudged term was actually used by the singer as part of a comment on China’s animal rights record, or lack of one. Speaking to poet Simon Armitage, he said: “Did you see the thing on the news about their treatment of animals and animal welfare? Absolutely horrific. You can’t help but feel that the Chinese are a sub-species”.

Now, if you’re going to debate this, you have to ask whether there was intent to present a racist view, and also if (regardless of whether or not that intent was there) it does harm to the victims of this slur in a racial sense.

Morrissey is a fervent animal rights campaigner, he named an album ‘Meat Is Murder’ and he’ll walk off stage at gigs if he can smell burgers. He’s also, as Foals’ Edwin Congreave put it this week, “famous for being a bit of a dick”. He’s not someone who keeps his feelings on animal rights polite. I’m fairly sure he’d consider anyone who harmed an animal part of a sub-species. That’s the kind of guy he is.

Does his use of the term “sub-species” in this context show intentional racism, or an incredibly unnecessary generalisation of an entire people in relation to a subject he feels strongly about? I’d argue the latter. Would he have made the same comment in the context of anything other than animal rights? Almost certainly not.

But does the comment do harm, in spite of this? Is it likely to lead others to form a hatred of Chinese people purely because of their race? Well, no. If you’re already a racist, you might see that quote and agree with it purely because you’re a cunt. If you’re an animal rights advocate, you might see it and agree with it purely because you find the mistreatment of animals abhorrent. If you’re neither, you might see it and wonder what the people of China have done in order to be called such a thing.

Does this debate further our understanding of racism, or the likelihood of bringing about its end? No. But, of course, you could argue that by challenging the use of any language that could possibly be deemed racist, you can eventually remove it from our society and make the world a better place.

But then, you could equally argue that by jumping on everything that might be considered offensive, regardless of context, you remove the potential to have a proper debate on any subject whatsoever. I’m sure at least one of you was offended by my use of the ‘c’ word in the last paragraph, but if you were to focus on that, rather the whole sentence, we’d not really be discussing the important issue there, would we?

This is my editorial from the 10 Sep 2010 edition of CMU Weekly, which you can read in full here.

Okay, you might say this case is different. This is a singing competition. This is the ‘X-Factor’. This is a search for Great Britain’s next big vocal talent, and if the programme’s makers are applying Auto-tune to people’s voices, how are we to know who is genuinely the best singer?

Well, firstly, let’s not even pretend that ‘X-Factor’ is a singing competition. If it was, such a large proportion of the show wouldn’t be devoted to humiliating deluded people. People whose comically warped opinion of their own singing ability has already been spotted by the show’s production team in the early stages of the auditions (the ones before they actually get in front of Simon and co). This whole section of the series is about laughing at idiots, with the occasional break for a sob story or an introduction to a ‘possible future star’.

All of which makes it ludicrous that anyone would complain about Auto-tune software being used to make the good people sound better and the bad people sound worse. If everyone was portrayed as being as close to average as they probably are, it would make for some pretty dull television and everyone would complain that it was boring. And the last thing ‘X-Factor’ wants to be is boring.

Last Saturday a record 11.1 million people tuned in to watch the first episode of the new series. Some of them then accused the show of using Auto-tune. And the show’s makers readily admitted it, issuing a statement saying: “The judges make their decisions at the auditions stage based on what they hear on the day, live in the arena. The footage and sound is then edited and dubbed into a finished programme, to deliver the most entertaining experience possible for viewers. When it gets to the live shows, it will be all live”.

The people who spotted the vocal manipulation had not done so because they were specialists in audio production, but because it was plainly obvious. If you actually listen to the vocals that were edited on last weekend’s programme, the tweaks were applied so heavy-handedly (distorting, rather than tuning), and seemingly at random, that you can’t help thinking someone involved in the show wanted people to notice. Either that, or they’ve got someone new in to do their sound editing, and s/he’s incredibly rubbish.

As a result of this, the show has been in the news all week, which is good news for the programme, its producers, its sponsors and its broadcaster ITV. ‘X-Factor’ traditionally keeps itself in the news by feeding stories to the tabloids about how the judges all hate each other and Louis Walsh could leave at any moment. But people are wise to that now. And anyway, simply turning up the Auto-tune a little has resulted in far more coverage than Louis’ fake tantrums ever could.

The only really interesting part of this story reveals itself if you turn your attention to ‘Britain’s Got Talent’, which is, of course, made by the same production team. The most successful thing that has ever happened on that show, or to any of its contestants (or to any contestant on a Cowell-owned franchise) is Susan Boyle’s first audition in front of the celebrity panel in 2009. She went on to be one of 2009′s most successful artists – worldwide – all because of that short audition peice, which became an internet phenomenon, thanks to YouTube and some high profile tweets. And this was an audition video that – rumours now has it – was very probably Auto-tuned.

But, hey, you’ll have to go a long way to find a mainstream artist whose voice isn’t Auto-tuned, even if just a little, these days. By manipulating contestants’ voices, ‘X-Factor’ is just preparing us for the reality of what’s to come. Really, instead of banning the software, which they claim to have now done, the show’s makers should have come out this week and said: “We’re going to Auto-tune the shit out of every single voice on the show from now on, because of your ridiculous high expectations. Now shut up and take it”. And then found a sound engineer who could use the technology without making it quite so bleedin obvious.

This was the ‘Beef Of The Week’ in the 27 Aug 2010 edition of CMU Weekly, which you can read right here.

And there have been a lot of emotionally charged calls for the BBC to save 6music. But I am a cold and unemotional creature. I was quite happy for Abbey Road to be turned into a kebab shop and I don’t think any band should reform ever. If something’s done with and served its purpose, it should be allowed to die. But 6music is not done with, and it’s still very much in the process of serving its purpose. So, for that matter, is the Asian Network, which is also earmarked for closure.

The BBC tell us that it wants to make cuts in order to focus more on “high quality programming”. Which sounds nice, but actually says very little. You might as well say you want to make programmes that feel more sticky. Plus, you could just as easily find money for more high quality programming by cutting the budgets and number of staff on things like Chris Moyles’ Radio 1 show, which have far too much of both. It makes no sense to completely cut services that are both high quality and incredibly important to their listeners, who are underserved elsewhere in broadcast media.

Also, we’re told that the BBC needs to give its commercial rivals a chance. If that’s the case, why aren’t they closing down Radio 1? And since when is competition a bad thing? Yes, the BBC receives its funds in an unusual way, but that doesn’t mean commercial services can’t produce better material than they can. If the entire BBC shut down tomorrow, would Sky suddenly start making programmes that were actually watchable? Somehow, I don’t think the BBC’s existence is what’s holding Sky back in that area.

And who exactly are these rivals who would thrive if 6music closes? Xfm and NME Radio are cited by some, but these stations do not serve the same audience. Because they’re funded by advertising, they have to go for the more lucrative youth market, with 6music’s listeners more likely to be in the thirty-something bracket. In fact, even Xfm’s Eddy Temple-Morris has called for 6 to be saved (see here).

While it’s true that the BBC could make significant savings in a variety of areas, and use the licence fee more efficiently, the cuts put forward just do not, er, cut it. But all is not lost, the BBC Trust still have to approve these proposals. You should tell them why they shouldn’t, and you can do that right here.

Okay, lengthy rant over, sorry. You can follow CMU’s coverage of this story as it develops here.

This is my editorial from this week’s CMU Weekly, which you can read here. I wrote something similar for the Remix Update, which you can see here.