Wednesday 12 March 2008

6Music: Part Two

Yesterday we noted how BBC 6Music's decision to consciously promote the boorish meanderings of George Lamb is unlikely to win the increase in female listeners they so desperately crave. Now, it's all too easy to criticise, not so easy to come up with your own ideas. With that in mind, we've been pondering just how 6Music could attract the attention of more women. After almost four seconds thought, we've arrived at the staggeringly obvious conclusion that playing more records performed and/or written by women would help. Hardly rocket science, really.

But, is the current playlist of 6Music really that male-dominated? BROKENTV MUST INVESTIGATE. To the spreadsheet application!

Thanks to 6Music's excellent Last.fm page, we're easily able to pull up information on every artist they've played over the last three months, ranked by the number of times each have been played. By taking track information for the forty most-played acts (deft use of Excel, Internet Explorer (Firefox doesn't tabulate the fields properly, for some reason), Notepad, copy and paste helps here), and noting the gender of vocalists for each act, we're able to arrive at a lovely big table full of delicious numbers. And yes, we really did do this. Look:



Yes, the points get split when vocal duties are shared, as with Sons and Daughters. So, what was the outcome of the twenty minutes of our one and only life that we spent on this?



As this incontrovertible proof shows, the controllers of 6Music still have a way to go before striking that blow for gender equality. But what of the other BBC music radio stations? Have we
spent so long obtaining comparable figures for them that we're so wearied we don't really have the time to write that much about them?





As we can see, Radio One is a misogynistic paradise, whereas Radio Two izzzzzz... nope, even we're bored of this now.
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Anonymous said...

I can't believe you rejected this. This is quite probably the biggest problem the nation has had to deal with since the Germans last had a go.

But seriously, we used to have 6Music on all day in our office, now we're stuck listening to internet radio, American ads and all.

I think 6Music's plan is to have all shows hosted by "comedians" just look at how many other shows are already, just play some music I might not have heard before and might like. On second thought just play some music.

Mark X said...

Indeed. As far as I know, XFM are still running with their 'No DJs, just uninterrupted music requests' format, which sounds ace (possibly because 6Music have stolen all their DJs, of course). Annoyingly, I can't pick up XFM on my office radio, so Radios One and Six are just about the only workable options (without someone else complaining and then putting Virgin Radio on, which is to be avoided at all costs).

6Music's reliance on comedians (another idea nicked from XFM, who had Adam & Joe, Gervais, Pilkington & Merchant, Frost & Pegg all on their roster around the same time) wouldn't be so bad if it were done the right way. Phill Jupitus was a great breakfast show host, and little things like getting to wake up to Catatonia's International Velvet or Eric Cartman's version of Sail Away would put me in a good mood all morning. Even Jon Holmes is surprisingly entertaining, against my expectations. I suppose the problem is that anyone who'd actually a really good comedian won't need to do that sort of thing for five days a week, so we get stuck with old "Shabba/Tramp/Boss-eyed council sort" chops instead.

Anonymous said...

I demand a pie chart for radio 4!

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