BBC strategy chief James Purnell has defended its two biggest music networks, Radio 1 and Radio 2, as “highly distinctive”, saying Radio 1 plays nearly 10 times as many different tracks in a month as its commercial rival, Capital.
Purnell warned there was a “tsunami happening with audience tastes around radio”, with a sharp fall in the amount of time young people spent listening, and said if the industry failed to react it would die out.
Purnell said Radio 1 played 3,868 different tracks every month, compared with Global Radio-owned Capital, which he said played 398 different tracks. He said Radio 1 shared 3% of its playlist with Capital, whereas Capital shared 32% of its tracks with Radio 1.
He also flagged up Radio 2, which he said played 4,423 different songs in a month, nearly three times the 1,598 tracks played by Absolute Radio, owned by Bauer Media. Radio 2 shared 13% of its tracks with Absolute Radio, against the 37% of songs Absolute shared with Radio 2, he added.
He spoke out at the Radio Festival on Tuesday after the two stations were singled out for possible cuts in the government’s green paper on the future of the BBC.
The green paper, published in July, said Radios 1 and 2 were “arguably less distinctive” than sister station 6 Music, saved from the axe five years ago, and said there was a “sizeable crossover in audiences” between the two stations, which the BBC has also disputed.
Purnell said the BBC was trying to persuade the government that “if you want to be distinctive, if you want to make the hits of tomorrow, that has to be on a station with lots of listeners.
“There’s no point introducing four people to a new song, much better to introduce 4 million people to a new song.”
He said there was a “tsunami happening with audience tastes around radio … if we collectively don’t respond to it, in 20, 30, or 40 years’ time there will be an irreversible trend as the older audience who grew up with radio dies out”.
A spokesperson for Radiocentre said: “The BBC appears to be in denial about the need for its music radio services to change. The fact is 60% of the music played on Radio 1 and Radio 2 in daytime is also available on commercial radio, so it is perfectly reasonable for government to ask whether this is distinctive enough.”
Purnell admitted to “sleepless nights” at the prospect that the budget deal with the government, in which the BBC took on the £700m burden of paying for free licence fees for the over-75s, was not the end to the cuts faced by the corporation.
But he said he was now reassured by what the government had said that “the deal was the deal” an it would not face another reduction in funding as part of the on-going discussions about the renewal of its royal charter.
He said the BBC would have a “real problem” if its charter period was halved to five years, as one report suggested.
“We have not heard that from government,” said Purnell. “We would have a real problem with that. One of the great things about a 10-year charter is it allows you to change and plan and do things like the iPlayer.
“Secondly, from the point of view of independence we need to know that we are not always under the cosh of, well, if you have a nasty story about the government they might take money off you.”
