Tom Watson’s suggestion that Radio 3 should give up its FM signal to its 6 Music colleagues, seeing as they get 0.01m more listeners, according to the last RAJAR survey, fills me with bafflement.

I am, I confess, a Radio 3 presenter. But as well as an inbuilt and lifelong connection with, and passion for, the single most important cultural institution in the country (it’s certainly been that for me, ever since I discovered that the station existed even on a frustratingly variable FM signal in Glasgow and the Highlands growing up in the 1980s and 90s, and new musical worlds opened up before my ears on a daily basis), I also love 6 Music. Steve Lamacq and I even co-presented the first-ever 6 Music Prom last August, when The Stranglers met the London Sinfonietta, and joyful noise and generic juxtaposition ensued.

Is Watson’s idea that Radio 3 basically doesn’t deserve the possibility of being listened to by the widest possible audience because it is, according to his view, a “niche station” (by the same logic, so is 6 Music - but of course that’s not how it seems to him nor its regular listeners, and neither is Radio 3 for its audience!), and should give up the chance of being heard by the substantial part of its listenership who currently don’t have digital radios at home or in their cars? That’s rather a weird notion, since it would logically mean the evaluation of All Cultural Things and their sanctioned diminishment according to the size of their audience, instead of looking at it the other way round, and saying that as many people as possible ought to have access to as wide a range of listening experiences as possible. And - (plug alert) there is, truly, nothing like Radio 3 offered anywhere else in the broadcasting firmament in this country, with its relationships with the BBC’s performing groups, its commitment to live music, to new music, to a range of speech programmes, and to thinking about music and the arts, and... - well, I could go on.

The world of FM and broadcasting as a whole in the UK would be hugely diminished, in my humble opinion, by the lack of a frequency-modulated Radio 3. And that’s before we get to the essential thing about both 3 and 6: for me, they both share an infectious commitment to the excitement of the music they are programming and broadcasting, and an audience who are open to exploring new sounds, ideas, and musical connections. Whichever station you listen to the most, that’s why we should celebrate both of them in their current forms and broadcasting dimensions. I’ll make a Radio 3 listener out of Tom Watson yet!