BBC 2011: “The Year The Music Died” It’s been building up for a few years now as the BBC, especially its radio stations, increasingly influence what we listen to as a nation via UK online and terrestrial services. The UK music scene has never been so poor, and dominated by so few acts and broadcasters. The BBC has much to answer for in its selection of popular music played and its obvious bias towards certain labels and acts. Yet no-one has held the BBC to account for its extravagant radio expenditure and plalist policy that effectively ignores much of the great, and often extraordinary, music and talent that is withering on the vine due to the lack of broadcast coverage. And it’s getting worse. BBC Radio 1 is also now dominating live broadcast popular music coverage possibly even being given special treatment by those grateful for the copious amounts of airplay received over many months and even years.

I Despair!

I’ve been a music fan longer than I can remember although I do recall singing along with Frank Sinatra in the locked front-room of my parent’s council house. I was around nine years of age, the radiogram housed a turntable and a very long needle playing heavy plastic 78 records. It was of course before popular music became the staple diet of the broadcaster which dominated the market then and now - the BBC. Then came the transistor radio and along with it Radio Luxemburg followed by the pirate stations like Radio Caroline, listened to under the bedcovers late at night out of earshot of mum and dad.

I was living in Hong Kong when BBC’s Top Of The Pops was launched in 1964 and for BBC Radio 1’s launch in 1967, but still had local HK radio to entertain me with all the best popular music from both sides of the Atlantic together with some surprisingly good local talent. The BBC actually meant something back then and of course was highly influential - even the best HK DJs went for training at the BBC…

The sixties were great popular music years, arguably the best. The Beatles, Rolling Stones, Dylan, Motown - an endless list of great artists and wonderful music dominated the airwaves and spread the word very nicely thank you.

But Where Are We Now?

I will summarise the current situation as us ‘having arrived at a bad place - a hellish musical cul-de-sac. Led by BBC Radio 1, the nation’s airwaves are flooded with the same music from the same acts on a daily and hourly basis. It seems that certain acts have acquired a God-given right to have their singles broadcast endlessly both weeks before release and months after release. BBC have declared their ‘trust in new music’ but totally fail to provide airtime to some of the mosty talented acts around - new and old. BBC Introducing is just an
expensive PR excercise which effectively discriminates between signed and unsigned, with no or very nominal mainstream/daytime airplay. While the likes of Olly Murs, One Direction, Cher LLoyd and others get flogged to death Shakenstir’s Best-Of-Year album acts can’t get arrested on Radios 1 and 2 - stations that are fully funded by UK tax-payers. Frankly I couldn’t give a monkey’s about the commercial radio broadcasters (who are also guilty) because they have to operate in a (misguided) competitive advertising revenue market; they are not owned by  the UK population who are legally obliged to pay £145 per annum to hear the BBC’s mostly garbage music.

In 2011 the BBC issued its financial report for 2010-2011 to a surprisingly muted response from the country’s media. It is a report long on rhetoric and short on detail. Let me give you an example which relates to my primary interest - radio. Nowhere is there listed personnel costs for each of the BBC radio stations and one is forced to guess if its hidden under the broad heading of ‘Infrastructure/Support’ in the summary section (along with the two other main headings ‘Content’and ‘Distribution’).