I’m a staunch advocate of the BBC and the licence fee, but today I really want to ram my licence fee down the throat of the director general. This is because the rumours are true and Mark Thompson and friends have decided to axe 6 Music (source: BBC News).

In an age of increasing rampant commercialism in the music sector, 6 Music is vitally important. It focuses on relative unknowns, doesn’t tend to force playlists on its DJs, and is therefore the closest thing we have left to John Peel. For up-and-coming musicians or long-time ones who never troubled the top 10, the station is essential, and for anyone with an interest outside the mainstream, it’s without doubt the best available station.

To that end, axing 6 Music is an astonishing decision, given the BBC’s public service remit. The argument from various idiots (including politicians and, unsurprisingly, News International) is that this is the kind of thing the commercial sector should deal with, making 6 Music a waste of the BBC’s funds and, by extension, licence payers’ money. But musicians outside of the mainstream are often not commercially viable and are therefore ignored, hence why even stations claiming to champion genuinely ‘indie’ music don’t—they instead tend to focus on artists majors are attempting to thrust into the spotlight.

Phill Jupitus has described the axing of 6 Music as “an act of cultural vandalism,” which is bang on the money. Thompson argues that the report—including the removal of 6 Music—is about “putting quality first,” which doesn’t ring true when the teens-only disaster that is Radio 1 gets to live. Clearly, this is about commercial viability—in other words, 6 Music is simply seen as too expensive to justify. That the digital station is being scrapped on the basis of a lowish audience share just prior to the digital switchover is idiotic, however.

This all said, I have some sympathy for the BBC. Both the Tories and Labour are, for whatever reason, beholden to major media corporations and hang on their every word. Both use BBC bashing as a way to drum up votes among the ignorant who don’t understand the true value of the BBC. One minute, they argue the BBC cannot justify the licence fee, due to low ratings. So the BBC responds by becoming more mainstream. Then the politicians argue the BBC is competing against existing commercial product, which is against its public service remit. Today, all these things are clashing, and the BBC is somehow accused of being too niche and yet also competing against existing commercial product.

Ultimately, this is probably the thin end of the wedge. With Thompson caving, in anticipation of a BBC-hostile Tory government, these won’t be anywhere near the last cuts, and we’ve probably started on the path to a ‘shell’ BBC. While I’m sure that’ll make the Sky-obsessed, drunk on American imports, gleefully happy, this spells disaster for home-grown programming and television and radio that isn’t entirely advertising-dependent and therefore utterly aimed at the mainstream.

UPDATE: The Register reports that the BPI and indie association AIM claim “half of the music programming [on 6 Music] is never played anywhere else,” which rather puts paid to claims that 6 Music is treading on the toes of commercial competition, and that commercial competitors are best suited to championing the kind of content 6 Music plays.

Following Warner Music’s announcement that it is to stop licensing its songs to free online music streaming services, stating that such things are “clearly not positive for the industry”, the record label is to also stop releasing music digitally and on CD. From tomorrow, all new Warner output will be exclusively on vinyl, with the average album costing around $50 (£32).

“Digital music and CDs are too easy to pirate,” said a Warner spokesperson. “Filthy f——ing pirate scum copying Warner albums results less income for our executives… uh, I mean artists, and so we’ve taken this step to ensure we… uh, I mean our artists get more income and can continue making wonderful music.” On the decision to go vinyl, the spokesperson remarked that “no modern PC has a vinyl slot” and that the company would soon release the iVinylPod, a device enabling you to play your Warner albums on the go. “The iVinylPod is slightly larger than the average mobile music player,” confirmed the spokesperson, adding: “But we think the music-buying public will happily forego a little convenience when they know record label executives are making money hand over fist. Uh, I mean when they know artists are getting more income from their wonderful music.”

Warner refused to comment on leaked information that its vinyl albums will also be removed from sale this summer, replaced by iWarner. According to documentation now circling the internet, the iWarner service removes media from the equation entirely. Instead, your selected artist comes to your house and plays their latest album live in your front room. To remove the threat of piracy, Warner detonates a small electromagnetic pulse bomb to destroy all recording equipment in your neighbourhood, and the suggested price per album of $1 million is, according to marketing blurb, countered by the “wonderful immersive experience that only iWarner can bring”.

If you’re unfamiliar with Mock The Week, it’s a panel show populated entirely by stand-up comedians. There are a few rounds, which aim to showcase the skills of the stand-ups, and it must be doing something right, because it’s now on its eighth series.

The problem with Mock The Week isn’t the show itself, which has now dispensed with awkward rounds from the first couple of series, and concentrates on more quickfire (and therefore funny) rounds and banter. The problem is the performers.

On watching Mock The Week, you might initially be surprised how good the stand-ups are, and how they come up with great stories off the top of their heads at a moment’s notice. But there’s always a nagging feeling that the show’s over-prepared, which becomes more apparent as the show goes on and the responses become more obviously canned and contrived.

Things get worse when you see any of the performers live, and realise that any given Mock The Week clearly largely comprises the performers getting the questions in advance, then figuring out which bits of their stand-up routines they can cut and paste into the show. With the exception of host Dara Ó Briain and occasional guest David Mitchell, Mock The Week always ends up resembling a déjà vu express train, battering you with micro-repeat after micro-repeat if you’ve watched any of the performers’ shows, or even Live At The Apollo.

Ultimately, Mock The Week is still a reasonable half-hour of entertainment, but it increasingly makes me yearn for Whose Line Is It Anyway?, a Radio 4 show that ended up spending a happy decade on Channel 4, before the plug was mysteriously pulled and an inferior US version was produced. WLIIA? was similar to Mock The Week, but didn’t bother with a topical hook, instead concentrating on a number of ‘generic’ games (‘hoedown’, ‘questions only’, ‘scenes from a hat’, and so on) with themes often chosen by the host (Clive Anderson in the UK version) from studio-audience suggestions. Performers would improvise their way through a scene or game until the host decided to move on. While regulars on the show undoubtedly had material or ideas to draw from, you never got the cumbersome ‘trying to weld a chunk of a stand-up routine into a supposedly off-the-cuff TV show’ problem Mock The Week suffers from.

With WLIIA? clearly not being the most expensive show in the world, and there still being plenty of capable UK-based performers (Comedy Store Players, most people who appear on QI, and people like Ó Briain, Mitchell and Jimmy Carr), it’s surprising that the show’s not made a come-back. Sadly, though, producer Dan Patterson reportedly fielded a question about WLIIA? at a Mock The Week recording last year, confirming that it’s not a rights issue holding up creating more of the older, better series—it’s that no British channel is interested. Although there are too many panel shows on the television, I feel that WLIIA? would nonetheless be a great show to bring back to British screens. Sure, it was hit-and-miss at times, but I’d sooner watch a half-hour of genuinely creative and new improvisational comedy than yet another half-hour of clips from a half-dozen stand-up routines.