This one, like so many before it, was sent to me by Adam. And it’s a beauty…

If you’re in the UK and on Twitter, you’re bound to have seen the anger and dismay caused by the BBC’s strategy review, which includes the recommendation that the BBC 6 Music digital radio station be closed down. Everything seems to be running off the hashtag #savebbc6music.

I don’t do this very often, but in support of the campaign to save 6 Music, I wrote an email to the BBC Trust (trust.enquiries@bbc.co.uk). Their response (see below) is pretty good – more considered than the bland and vacuous “thanks for your comments” replies you usually get. I think two things are noteworthy:

1. trust.enquiries@bbc.co.uk is definitely the right email address to write to, and by doing so your views will be taken into account (apparently)
2. the consultation is open until Tuesday 25th May, so this is definitely NOT a done deal yet.

Anyway, I urge you to send an email of your own to trust.enquiries@bbc.co.uk, expressing your wish for 6Music to be saved from the axe. And check out #savebbc6music on Twitter (I believe there’s a Facebook page for this as well) to find other things you can do (like sign one of the several petitions that have been set up).

Right, here’s the BBC Trust’s response. My original email to them is at the bottom:

Thank you for contacting the BBC Trust, the governing body of the BBC, with your concerns about the future of the radio station 6Music.

As you may be aware, the proposal to close the station has come from the Director-General Mark Thompson as part of a wide ranging review of the BBC’s future strategy.

In July last year the BBC Trust challenged the Director-General to address questions about the scope of the BBC’s activities, focusing on how the BBC can most effectively deliver its public service mission and meet audience needs as well as deliver value for money. The full strategy, which is now available on the Trust’s website, is the Executive’s response to this challenge.

As part of his proposals to the Trust, which are focused on increasing the quality of the BBC’s output and setting a new direction for the BBC, the Director-General has proposed closing 6Music. The Trust is now consulting on all of these proposals, and we welcome your views.

We will of course take your email as a contribution to our consultation. Should you wish to know more about the overall strategy review and our public consultation, there is more information on the Trust’s website at: http://www.bbc.co.uk/bbctrust/our_work/strategy_review/index.shtml

To be clear, a decision on whether or not to close 6Music will need to be made by the BBC Trust and we will consider any formal proposal to do so very carefully.

Our consultation is open until 25 May 2010.

BBC Trust Unit

Here’s my original email to them…

Dear Sir/Madam,

I am really disappointed to read in today’s press that the option of shutting down the 6 Music is being seriously considered.

I’m 38 years old; too old for the youth audience targeted by Radio 1, and generally too young for Radio 2 (despite efforts over the last few years to widen the appeal of Radio 2). However, 6 Music is the ideal radio station for the millions of us who fall into the 25-to-50 age bracket.

I would – given the opportunity – listen to 6 Music all the time. It’s only the fact that 6 Music is only available through the digital network that prevents me from doing so. I imagine there are millions of other potential listeners just like me.

The BBC has a history of providing broad appeal radio coverage for the whole country (and beyond); from the mainstream Radio 1 and 2, through the more specialist national audiences for Radio 3, 4 and 5, down to the plethora of local BBC stations (the point of which I’ve never really understood). The only real gap in the BBC’s radio coverage was plugged by 6 Music – which appeals to a large and important demographic.

When 6 Music was launched I was disappointed that it was digital-only. At that time I thought the BBC had missed an opportunity to create an extremely popular wide-audience station. Now that there are such strong reports that you are considering closing down 6 Music, I feel that my initial judgement was correct.

6 Music has a small audience, but we are extremely loyal. I have no doubt that if 6 Music was available to a wider audience (on FM, for instance), it would attract a large audience that is just as loyal. Digital radio in general seems to have been a failed experiment – many commercial digital stations have folded because – quite simply – not enough people bought DAB radios. I would hate to think that the BBC is mistaking the failure of DAB as a whole with a failure for 6 Music, as I am certain that this would be a mistake. If 6 Music was presented to a wider potential audience, I am absolutely convinced that it would be a big success.

Finally, as a licence fee payer, I sincerely hope that this potential decision isn’t based upon financial considerations. I have no idea how much money is poured into – say – Radio 3, Radio 4 and the BBC’s local radio stations, but I would MUCH rather see money saved in these areas in order to save 6 Music, and promote it to a wider audience. After all, Radio 1, 3 and 5 and ALL BBC local stations have direct commercial equivalents. Radio 2, 4 and 6 do not. Therefore it seems extremely short-sighted to threaten the BBC’s unique offerings in favour of more run-of-the-mill services. After all, surely the BBC’s raison d’etre is to provide broad programming to all sections of the UK.

In closing, I hope I have made it clear how disappointed I would be if 6 Music was to close down. I am certain that there are an awful lot of people who feel the same as I do, and I sincerely hope that many of them choose to write to you expressing their disappointment as well. A quick glance at Twitter should be enough to prove to you the strength of feeling this story has generated (search for #saveBBC6music).

Please reconsider.

Sincerely,
Mike Bygrave

I’ve just spent some time tweaking the style and layout of this blog. Not that anyone will notice.

However, for what it’s worth, I’ve just done the following:

1. tidied up the main text styles – they’re now a little smaller and, hopefully, a tad neater
2. got rid of some of the crap in the sidebar on the right – did anyone really care what the weather in Bedford currently is?
3. added a pretty Twitter badge to the top of the sidebar, and re-arranged the rest of the stuff that’s left
4. got rid of the irritating “Site Admin” label that was in the menu bar, and replaced it with a little login widget at the foot of the sidebar

That’s it. The real purpose of this post is to test some of the new text settings; however, if you happen to spot any of the changes I’ve made, you’re more than welcome to tell me what you think (I guess adding a comment is the best way).

A new stupid name – this time from the BBC online…

Ben Dirs – online rugby live text fella.

Geddit? It sounds like “benders”. Arf!

Oooh – and here’s a picture of Ben…

Mr Tiny Kox. From Holland (…figures).

Many moons ago (12th May 2009 to be unnecessarily precise) I suggested a top ten list of 18 rules that should be part of the Twitter sign-up process. While my maths may have improved since then, it seems that Twitter has not. Indeed, as Twitter continues to get more and more popular, it seems that a disproportionate number of these Twimmigrants are hell-bent on befouling the playground with their rusty syringes of irritating contribution.

Being a Good Socialist, I realise that I’m prone to enthusiastic bouts of rule-making and social engineering. However, I think it’s time for a few more, up-to-date, Twitter rules.

PS Please don’t use the word “Twimmigrants”. I made it up so it’s mine, and I’m trying to sell it to the Daily Mail.

More Twitter Rules
1. Twitter is NOT an “ideal marketing platform”. An ideal marketing platform is a place where you can try to sell your tat to people who are looking to buy tat. Walking into a room or bar where people are happily chatting, pretending to be interesting for a while and then grabbing everyone and shouting “buy my tat because I’m an EXPERT!” is not acceptable.

2. Look, I know that Twitter is indexed by Google. So when you start randomly posting dozens of links to “useful” articles that you’re “borrowing” from other people on the web, you’re not fooling me; I know that you’re targeting search engines rather than Twitter users. A big clue is when you post links to articles faster than anyone could possibly read them. Anyway, it’s incredibly rude, so please pack it in.

By the way, if you’re going to ignore this because your grimy doomed-to-fail attempts at grabbing a few quid are more important to you than pissing me off, at least have the decency to set up a separate Twitter account to do it from. that way you can while away the hours wasting your time on stupid attempts to trick Google, without me following you.

3. If – on a regular basis – you’re going to post more frequently than once every couple of hours, then don’t be surprised when people stop following you. If you want to tell me everything you are doing/have done/are thinking then it’ll be more efficient for me to throw Twitter away and just move in with you. I’m not going to do that.

4. Just because retweeting is a big part of Twitter, that doesn’t mean it’s OK for your marketing plan to include nicking other people’s web content and passing it on through your Twitter account, under the guise of being helpful. In effect you’re saying “Bert thinks that widgets are cool. I agree, so that means you should buy my tat”. I can go and buy a Manchester United shirt, however doing so won’t make me any better at football.

5. More on retweeting – it’s OK to retweet stuff that is genuinely interesting. However endlessly retweeting other people’s comments just shows that you have nothing interesting to say yourself. And you know what everyone’s mum says: “If you haven’t got anything useful to say, for fuck’s sake SHUT UP” (well, that’s what my mum said anyway).

6. If you’re using Twitter as a marketing tool, then odds on you’ve got a corporate blog (because that’s what marketing people were saying everyone should do three years ago). Please, please stop sending a tweet advertising your blog every single time you post something to it. If I want to be updated every time your update your blog (which, after all, is probably just there as another tat-selling channel) I can use RSS – that’s what it’s for.

7. Time for a non marketing-related rule. Twitter is not a popularity contest, so stop sending out messages imploring people to follow you. If you’re in any way interesting, I may follow you; if all you do is yell “look at me! be my friend!, look at me some more!” then I definitely won’t.

8. Going back to the original list of rules, they still haven’t come up with a way of formalising hash tags. Bastards.

That’ll do for now. There’ll probably be more – next time I’m grumpy no doubt.

I haven’t done this for bloody ages.

Helmut Knoblich – the third person down on this page.

DailyBooth – a website where the shallowest of narcissists can constantly publish vacuous photos of themselves, because they’re likely to have equally shallow friends who give a shit.

Alternatively, it’s a mirror with a “Look at me!” button. Which they push. A lot.

Whatever it is, a strong case could be made for rounding up all its users and melting them in acid.

(I haven’t checked, but I hope no-one I know uses it)

A pox on DailyBooth and anyone who uses it .

If The Empire had access to decent social media, things could have been very different. But – alas – they didn’t.

However…

If they had Facebook in Star Wars

Proof that adding Brian Blessed to anything automatically makes it good…