Absolute Radio shopping for BBC 6 Music

Calling all depressed 6 Music fans! You can put away your Radiohead tunes and prepare for a bit of Walking on Sunshine, for, if as The Times rumoured this morning, the BBC does shut your favourite radio station down, a company is waiting in the wings to buy it.

Inevitably that company is Absolute Radio, the station formerly known as Virgin Radio.
Clive Dickens, the chief operating officer of Absolute, told The Times that he would approach the BBC with a view to buying the station.

He said: “We would buy 6 Music from the BBC, both the brand and the network, and we’d run it more efficiently than they’ve been doing.”

According to the Times Absolute has twice as many listeners as 6 Music but costs half as much to run. The article says that industry pundits reckon that 6 Music is worth £2-3 million which sounds like very little for a radio station with that kind of customer loyalty.

Before getting too excited 6 Music fans should remember what happened to XFM. The initial station, which opened in 1997, had a very similar approach to its content as 6 Music. However it was eventually bought by the group that owned Capital and quickly shed almost all its specialist shows.