BBC to close its Asian Network

It’s a sad day for Asian media in the UK. BBC stays firm on its stand to close down the Asian Network in an effort to streamline its products and justify the licensing fee. Along with it, 6 Music and a large part of the online team will face the axe.

Although there have been talks since last month, BBC’s director general Mark Thompson in a report to the BBC Trust today specifically recommends the closure of Asian Network. It lists the Asian Network’s audience as 0.4 million weekly listeners (on a decline) with a budget of £12.1 million making the cost per listener extremely high (cost per user per hour 6.9p).

While inside BBC there is much chaos at the moment, outside the supporters of the Asian Network have come together to help save the station. The social networking site facebook has a Save the BBC Asian Network page and promoting an online petition that has over 21000 signatures supporting the Asian Network and 6 Music. The goal is to get 100,000. Also Labour MP from Birmingham, Tom Watson has laid a motion in the Commons to save the station that caters to the high Asian voters in Birmingham.

Probably the only very vocal critic at the moment is Avtar Lit, founder of the Sunrise radio channel (probably the Network’s biggest competitor) who claimed in the Guardian that the station was ‘poorly managed’ and most listeners ‘wouldn’t give a toss’ if it was taken off air.

But the Asian Network at BBC is not really about Asian music or news. It is about Asians being a prominent part of the huge gigantic BBC Empire. For Asian journalism students in UK, the Asian Network was a beacon of hope. During my Masters at City University, I had applied for an internship at BBC, an extremely rigorous application procedure for a much competed and coveted position. Almost every single one of the thousands of journalism students in UK applies for an internship at BBC and the ones that make it are a miniscule percentage. So you can imagine how thrilled I was to get one with the Asian Network at Birmingham. I had to turn it down as I was already in employment then but it was definitely one of my proudest moments as a student.

The Asian Network situated at the Mailbox in Birmingham, is nothing compared to the BBC HQ at White City, London in terms of size but it’s always buzzing with activity and enthusiasm. Silver Street, the first radio soap opera aimed at the British South Asians was a huge craze six years ago when I visited the studios and met some voices. Apparently, it’s still a craze, just like Sonia Deol’s show.

The Asian network wasn’t like any Asian media organization; there was an aura of professionalism and perfection subscribing much to BBC’s ethos. Yet it was somehow desi and that’s what I will always remember about it.

This debate on Asian Network’s closure, to me, is not about rankings or balancing financial accounts, it’s about losing the ‘only’ thing that was desi in the BBC.