If ever a technology has failed to live up to its potential it is satellite broadcasting. Hundreds of channels of every sort of unwatchable idiotic tosh litter the outer reaches of the broadcasting spectrum and most radio stations play it safe with musical choices which have more to do with advertising demographics than the presenters’ tastes.

Two bright spots are BBC 4 and BBC 6Music . BBC 4 features lots of programmes with well informed people talking about subjects they have studied. It ranges from Byzantine art to documentaries about German avant garde music in the 60s and 70s. Low budgets mean that there are no fancy graphics or attempts to recreate the Battle of Waterloo with twenty extras and four horses. It’s a refreshing break from much BBC factual programme making which more and more relies on some family entertainer investigating quantum mechanics with the aid of bewildering graphics and an assumption that the people who choose to watch this sort of thing need the same level of visual stimulus as someone watching MTV. BBC 4 programmes even abandon the need for something heartwarming to happen at the end of each programme. The Krautrock documentary didn’t end with Faust getting a Scandinavian number one hit, though it did show them trying to make music by banging a cement mixer around a barn.

BBC 6Music  has a similarly Reithian take on what it does, if you set aside a compulsive need to play too much familiar old stuff during peak times. It’s the place to go if you want to find the non-commercial hinterland, the things that you never knew existed. More importantly it dedicates a big portion of its broadcasting time to giving a platform for new musicians. Marc Riley has introduced me to 80% of what I’ve bought this year. Without that space for emerging talent we face a future where Susan Boyle and the Killers are all you’ll get to hear.

How does the BBC’s Director General Mark Thompson decide to celebrate these two important stations? By suggesting that he plans to shut them down. He said in a recent interview :

“Expect to see reductions in some kinds of programmes and content… and a close examination of the future of our service portfolios once switchover has been achieved.”

That means “we are thinking of shutting down the two things that don’t pull big enough audiences and we’ll use the money to put lots of our old programmes on iPlayer.”

With no obvious irony he added that there will be a “further shift in emphasis in favour of key priority areas”, including news, children’s programmes. The main evening news bulletin on BBC 1 is now a cross between the Daily Mail and a lifestyle magazine aimed at an imagined audience which needs to be patronised to within an inch of its life. On top of that anyone with the vaguest connection to its news gathering operations  will explain at some length how journalists are under great pressure to provide endless content for the website and the interactive platforms at the expense of proper journalism.

If public service broadcasting funded by a compulsory licence should have anything to distinguish it from the Extreme Skateboarders Go Large in Ibiza HD channel or, heaven forfend, provincial commercial radio it should be about allowing niche programming for people who don’t want to be sold car insurance in between Lily Allen and Alexandra Burke songs. The battle to protect BBC 4 and BBC 6Music starts here!