Ed O'Brien writes to the BBC Trust to save 6 Music

Ed O'Brien has written to the BBC Trust asking it to save 6 Music, after Mark Thompson, the BBC's director general, announced plans on 2 March to close the station as part of a wider overhaul. O'Brien put the letter on Dead Air Space, the band's blog, on 3 March, introducing Thompson as Herr Director General of the BBC³ and pointing readers to the Trust's public consultation on the plan, since the Trust, he writes, has the power to reverse it.

The letter calls 6 Music the lifeblood of music outside the mainstream, the only place where an archived T. Rex session might sit next to the latest Midlake record. He sides with David Bowie, who said it carries on John Peel's spirit. Bowie, Lily Allen and Glastonbury Festival have already come out against the plan.

Closing it, O'Brien writes, would be a huge blow to new acts and the labels behind them, and steering Radio 1 and Radio 2 in its direction would not make up for it. On a budget he puts at about £6 million a year, the station, he says, punches well above its weight. What you have with 6 Music is a gem of a radio station, it is doing what no other station in the world does or can possibly do.¹