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.