6-0-6

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The BBC's 6-0-6 is a talkshow, or football phone-in, broadcast on BBC Radio Five Live throughout the football season. It covers topics relating to the current affairs of football in the United Kingdom. There are 3 shows most weeks, Saturday, Sunday and Wednesday, each with a different presenter. These include Ray Stubbs (2006-), Manish Bhasin, DJ Spoony and Alan Green, who has normally commentated on a game the same day. As well as listeners phoning in, a selection of texts to the studio are read out. In addition to this, there is also an online version of 606 in the form of an Internet message board, although in early 2006 the site was forced to close due to the large amount of web traffic and forum threads. ^[1] In the months following, its availability was intermittent and this caused a lot of regular users to abandon the site. ^{[citation needed]}

[edit] Background

Originally the programme was broadcast only once a week, on Saturdays after Sports Report. It got its name from the (approximate) time the show started along with the fact it was 909 (one of the station's frequencies) upside down. Its original host was Danny Baker (1991-1992, 1994-1997). David Mellor (1992-2001) was more well known presenting it for most of the and early on in the 2000's. Other previous hosts have included Richard Littlejohn (1997-2002), Dominik Diamond, Adrian Chiles (2001-2006) and Jonathan Pearce (2002-2003).

A popular feature of the programme in recent years has been the so called "rant line". People can phone the rant line at any time during the week and record their message. A selection of the best of these is then broadcast in a montage at some point during the programme. In recent years during Wimbledon the station has hosted a 6-Love-6 phone about tennis with John McEnroe. During the 2005 Ashes a cricket related 6-0-6 was also broadcast.