6-0-6

606 Football Phone-In

Genre	Phone-in
Country	United Kingdom
Languages	English
Home station	BBC Radio 5 Live previously BBC Radio 5
Recording studio	Various locations
Air dates	since 1991
Audio format	FM, Digital radio and Digital TV
Website	Official Website
Podcast	Official Podcast

6-0-6 (pronounced six-oh-six) is a football phone-in, broadcast on BBC Radio Five Live throughout the British football season. It covers topics relating to the current affairs of football in the United Kingdom.

The programme gets its name from the (approximate) time the show starts on a Saturday evening — six minutes past six - after the Sports Report had finished.^[1]

It currently airs on Saturdays and Sundays and is produced by independent production company Somethin' Else. As well as listeners phoning in, a selection of texts and e-mails to the studio are read out.

The programme was inspired by long-running BBC Local radio football phone-ins such as the BBC Radio Sheffield programme "Praise or Grumble".^[2]

6-0-6's current theme tune is an arrangement of "1901" from Phoenix.

Presenter history

Its original host was Danny Baker (1991–92, 1996–97, 2008–09). David Mellor (1992–2001) presented 6-0-6 for much of the 1990's and early on in the 2000's and was for a long time its regular Wednesday-evening presenter. Other previous hosts have included :

• Richard Littlejohn (1997–2002),
• Dominik Diamond
• Adrian Chiles (2001–06)
• Jonathan Pearce (2002–03)
• Tim Lovejoy (2007-09)
• DJ Spoony and Gabriele Marcotti
• Alan Green
• Mark Champman
• Robbie Savage
• Darren Fletcher
• Jason Roberts

During the 2000's, Issy Clarke read out emails and text messages before she moved to Baker's new Saturday morning show.

Other occasional presenters include Mark Lawrenson, Steve Claridge, Mark Bright, and Manish Bhasin.

Danny Baker returned to 6-0-6 to present six Euro 2008 specials, and proved such a big hit with the listeners that he was invited back to present regularly on Tuesdays.^[3]

Under Baker in the 1990s the show favoured bizarre and obscure but hilarious topics, avoiding the matches played and headline news in the football. There was also music in its first years. However, from Mellor onwards, the show became established as a more mainstream phone-in, mainly focusing on Premier League teams.

In the 2009-10 season the program was hosted by DJ Spoony and Gabriele Marcotti, Alan Green, presented Saturday and he typically commentated on an evening match before presenting the Saturday show. Tim Lovejoy joined to present Wednesday and Danny Baker joined to present on Tuesday from 10-11pm. Occasional presenters for the 2009/10 season include Mark Lawrenson, Steve Claridge, Mark Chapman, Mark Bright, Perry Groves, Robbie Savage, Darren Fletcher and Soccer AM Presenter Max Rushden.

2010-11 season onwards

2010-11 season was a big change for 606, the Saturday show started again at 6:06pm on Saturday afternoons after talksport took the rights to Saturday evening Premier League matches. This season was presented by Mark Chapman while Robbie Savage joined as an official co-host. It was Savage's final season as a professional footballer for Derby County and he often appeared on the show after playing football that afternoon. He won the Rising Star in radio Sony Radio Award for his plain speaking.

When Chapman was unavailable the program was usually hosted by Darren Fletcher, the 5 live commentator and Mike Parry, formerly of talksport, hosted with Savage a few times. Sunday's show was hosted by Alan Green by himself.

The Tuesday and Wednesday shows were dropped as well only appearing on international nights and instead 5 Live Sport was extended to 10:30pm.

Following Savage's retirement at the end of the 2010-11 season, he announced he would no longer co-present 6-0-6. He was replaced by footballer Jason Roberts of Reading FC. The show now starts at 7:10.

Programme features

Season 2009/10 saw the launch of the 606 Soapbox outside grounds. Fans can drop into the Soapbox and speak live to presenters Spoony and Gabriele Marcotti in the 5 Live studios. Every three weeks the Soapbox visits a league football ground in various locations around the country.

Sunday's 606 also has a weekly celebrity fan, reporting on the game they have been to that day. Celebrity fans so far have included Ray Winstone (West Ham United), Alan Davies (Arsenal), Beverly Knight (Wolves), Norman Jay (Spurs), Trevor Nelson (Chelsea), Tony Jeffries (Sunderland) and James and Oliver Phelps aka the Weasley twins from the Harry Potter films (Birmingham City and Aston Villa).

Now the Sunday show has a feature where 5 callers have 10 seconds to state their name, where they are from and their point

6-0-6 online forum

In addition to the phone-in programme, there was also an online version of 6-0-6 in the form of an Internet message board, although in June 2006 the site was forced to temporarily close due to the large amount of web traffic and forum threads. Football, cricket, rugby union, rugby league, snooker, motorsport and several other sports had message boards embedded into 606.

On 24 January 2011, It was announced the 6-0-6 forum would close at the end of the 2010-11 football season. ^[4] The forum finally closed on 31 May 2011. ^[5]

6-0-6 also has an active Facebook group, for fans to chat, and view behind the scenes pictures of the show. Listeners can follow 606 @bbc606 on Twitter.

Spin-offs

Other sports occasionally get the 6-0-6 treatment. These include Tennis, where the show became 6 Love 6 presented by John McEnroe, Cricket's 6-Duck-6 presented by former England captain Michael Vaughan and Formula 1, where Murray Walker presents. Since the 6-0-6 website disabled the ability to add comments and is no longer maintained, there have been a number of websites set up to continue providing this service including Sport 606, New 606 Sport Forum, 606v2 and 606discuss.

References

External links

• 606 Homepage BBC Sport