In The City hits back. Possibly

In The City - Tony Wilson's increasingly vanity-conference - is going to return this year, despite a dwindling number of attendendees over the last couple of years as record company budgets tightened.

Announcing plans for the next twenty four months, Wilson took the opportunity to moan about the state of the British Music Industry. At least he's not blaming computers; Wilson thinks

“Retaking the World is not a reference to ITC but rather the state of the UK industry which has lost so much of its world market share. ITC believes the media has much responsibility and it is the UK media that will be the focus of ITC 2003. We’re not blaming the provincial futility of Pop Stars or the overarching monopoly of the UK’s only national FM radio station, but fingers can be pointed and they will be pointed.”

Hmmm. Wonder how far Wilson's prepared to go pointing the finger at Popstars which - as a product of Granada Media Group ultimately is underwriting his day-job wage packet when he reads the local news on Granada TV.

More curious is quite what he means by "the UK's only national FM radio station."

Leaving aside the fact that there's more than one anyway; and even more than one pop station, now that Radio 2 is attaching itself to more ears than Radio 1, you could argue that the Capital Stations and the EMAP stations form blocs just as powerful as Radio 1 in breaking new bands anyway - a glance at the ILR playlist, the Radio 1 playlist and the Top 40 will usually show more of the big sellers getting support from the commercial lobby than the licence-supported network. Of course, the main problem with the British Music Industry is that the Industry is run by an increasingly elderly, out-of-touch bunch of twits who rely on their glories from the days of punk (or, god help us, prog.) But even the plain talking Mr W knows that he won't rescue In The City by slagging off the very people he needs to attend.