MixTogether & Friends

To begin this post, let’s just take a moment to be clear about the proposed plans for the BBC Asian Network.

Anyone who has read the actual BBC Strategy Review (and if you haven’t then you can’t really comment) can see the outline of the plan: Asian Network will lose its national status, and be re-focused on 5 key areas. Listeners in the 5 proposed areas make up 70% of the existing audience, so the vast majority will not lose a service.

What we are discussing, then, is not the total loss of Asian Network but the makeup of a future service that will be more efficiently targeted.

Many commentators are trying to shout for more Asian music provision. They argue it is ‘all about the music’ and express fears that Asian artists will not be able to make a living if the station is cut down to a smaller size.

What they don’t seem to recognise is that the BBC’s remit goes far beyond just music. It is specifically NOT concerned with commercial viability or the livelihoods of musicians or promoters (despite the suggestion of certain YouTube videos which I won’t link to… for now…) The BBC is specifically trying NOT to encroach on the commercial sector, which should look after industry figures if they are any good.

Those demanding a license-fee funded copy of commercial radio need to re-evaluate. It is right that the BBC represents different demographics- including the many different Asian demographics- in its programming. MixTogether and friends will be submitting a strong case for the inclusion of the most vulnerable Asian demographic in the future makeup of the Asian Network.

It’s not all about the music.

This post is based on my comment left below Sunday’s Observer piece Why we should celebrate the end of Asian Network:

Last week a group of 100 actors, MPs and musicians wrote to the Guardian in defence of the BBC Asian Network. Leaving aside the fact that some of them are not license fee payers, the really shocking thing about the list was that it did not feature any campaigners against so-called honour crimes.

This was despite an offer of their help to some of the organisers of the letter.

It is unfair to sideline those who represent the most vulnerable in Asian society. Aside from the odd phone-in and documentary, the Asian Network has done little directly to challenge the mindset that makes girls a prisoner in their homes in eg. Bradford, Birmingham or Southall. There is no content for survivors of forced marriage or disownment, to help them find acceptance in the Asian community where their very existence is treated as a dark secret.

When MixTogether drew up a proposal last year (supported by the EHRC and several high profile charities) for a show aimed at more vulnerable members of the Asian community, it was turned down by the Asian Network. 

The Asian Network’s ‘coolest’ shows are produced and presented by British Asians who live on the party scene and have all the freedom they could wish for. Their lives have no ‘deep connection‘ to, say, a girl in Keighley who is told she must forget further education and marry a first cousin from abroad.

The Guardian letter shows that there is still a distaste for the vulnerable among the BBC Asian Network’s trendy supporters. If the future of the Network does not include plans to redress the balance, then maybe it HAS reached the end of its useful life.

News has reached us of a new website set up to coordinate the campaign to try and save the Asian Network.

www.savetheasiannetwork.com will provide a single source for information as it unfolds relating to the BBC Asian Network.  The site provides real-time news from multiple cited sources including conventional media and micro-blogging sources like Twitter.

The BBC Asian Network faces closure, but Vijay Sharma (the head of the Network) is nowhere to be seen.

Yesterday the Guardian published an article by Nihal, one of the top presenters from the Asian Network. He appears to have been drafted in to make the case for the survival of the Network in its current form. Although Nihal is probably the most widely known presenter from the Asian Network (he also has a show on Radio1) he is by no means the most senior member of staff at the station.

BBC Asian Network is ultimately under the control of Andy Parfitt, who controls BBC Radio 1, Popular Music, BBC 1Xtra, BBC Asian Network and BBC Switch.

Vijay Sharma is responsible for managing the Asian Network, followed by Husain Husaini and ‘Markie’ Mark Strippel. None of these senior staff members has made any public comment since it was announced that the Asian Network faces closure.

Dhiren Katwa, senior news editor at Asian Voice, complained over a month ago that Vijay Sharma had been ‘in hiding’. Nothing appears to have changed.

It is quite unbelievable that DJs and presenters are being left to defend the station, while the senior management team (who have attracted much of the criticism for the station’s troubles in recent days) are nowhere to be seen.

Update: Mark Thompson on BBC news 24 this lunchtime stated that Asian content would be re-distributed between existing platforms in local radio, national radio and TV…

Commentator Sunny Hundal has finally mentioned BBC Asian Network on his Pickled Politics blog. Until recently he has had his say via Asians In Media where nobody can comment.

In his latest post, he gives 5 reasons why the Asian Network should not be axed. They are:

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1) It would reduce competition

2) [the Asian Network is] A source of talent for the BBC and rest of the media

3) It would create ‘parallel lives’

4) It would abandon Asian license fee payers

5) [It would] Remove a vital platform for British Asian culture

Nowhere in his list is there any mention of the most vulnerable and marginalised members of the Asian community: those who have been disowned, or who have fled home to escape forced marriages or other forms of child abuse and domestic violence. There is no mention of those who would like some content for mixed race families, despite the hostility to race mixing in some Asian households. Sunny Hundal knows very well that MixTogether members submitted a widely-supported proposal to the Asian Network last year for this kind of content.

Left wing commentators like Hundal are fond of challenging dominant paradigms. Be it U.S. cultural hegemony or the power of organised religion, they usually have something negative to say about them (and they are often right). When it comes to the dominant paradigm of Asian life in this country however, there is a deafening silence from these ‘principled’ commentators.

In fact across Asian media- in print, on the radio and on TV- those who choose or are forced to live a life outside the traditional community structures are made almost completely invisible.  Lip service is paid to their plight in the form of ‘debates’ and the occasional  documentary or story piece, but that is as far as it goes. There is a terror of admitting how deep these problems go, so they are covered up behind a glossy screen of Bollywood and bhangra, fair-skinned models and fabulous clothes.

The Asian Network has spent £12m a year on its service. Meanwhile charities who work with the most vulnerable in the Asian community have had their funding cut. Karma Nirvana has had to cut its Honour Helpline service. Where is the fairness in giving £12m of License Fee money to a station aimed at the Asian community when that station does next to nothing to help struggling Asian charities?

Those who find themselves outside the dominant paradigm of Asian life in the UK are rarely seen and never heard. The tiny group of professionals who hold influence within Asian media (and yes many of them owe their careers to the BBC) know that they hold the power to change the outcome for these most vulnerable members of the Asian community. So why do they choose to ignore them?

Is a British woman who has been cut off from her Asian roots by her family for most of her life not a license fee payer too?  Does she pay her license fee to fund an Asian station to treat her as if she is invisible? Does she pay to fund ‘debates’ where there is always a call from some hardline traditionalist to remind her why she has been locked out of her own culture?

Are British license fee payers paying the Asian Network to propagate the dominant Asian social paradigm that so many young Asians want to escape from?

And if so, why should the station be saved?

Update: I have emailed Virendra Sharma MP, who is supporting an early day motion on the Asian Network, urging him to take MixTogether’s perspective on board.

After the news broke on Friday that BBC Asian Network faces the axe along with 6 music, campaigns were launched to save the stations.

Both are visible on Twitter, whare the #saveasiannetwork campaign has been attracting regular posts from interested parties including the Asian Network’s Bobby Friction and other artists and producers.

Bobby Friction invited all supporters of the network to email him in order to begin mounting a resistance to the rumoured closure.

I have emailed him to offer the support of MixTogether and members of other established organisations.

If people are serious about campaigning to save the Asian Network, they will need the support of reutable organisations, not just the same artists, DJs and producers who have always been with them. If any future administration is to be convinced of the merits of a BBC Asian service, that service will need a more radical social agenda as well as more listeners. Programming aimed at those who have survived disownment / forced marriage / rejection of a non-Asian partner would deliver both.

A rejection of our offer of help with this campaign would give a clear indication of the direction it is going in.

I hope to hear back from the organisers. They need the credibility that that we have to offer.

Update: there are also Facebook campaign groups here and here.

Reputable Asian Media news outlet BizAsia* reports that the BBC Asian Network faces closure.

Reports are surfacing that the BBC Asian Network has been axed, no official comment from the BBC yet.
The Times claims Mark Thompson, the Director-General, will announce next month the closure of the digital radio stations Asian Network and 6 Music

Recent announcements from Asian Network have all been minor tinkering and insignificant reshuffles. There has been no attempt to bring forward a more radical agenda.

MixTogether has been following the declining fortunes of the station since last year. The management team of Andy Parfitt and Vijay Sharma declined our proposal for a new show aimed at mixed couples, who face significant discrimination in the Asian community. Their failure to embrace the potential of the station to speak to the most vulnerable of Asian listeners is a serious omission that has directly contributed to the loss of this valuable resource.

We wait to hear the full details, and to see whether the BBC can come up with a new offering that is more relevant to the lives of young Asian people in the UK. Mixed relationships are a fact of life, and Asian Media needs to catch up on that fact across the board.

Update: The BBC reports that it doesn’t know what its own report says!

*Reputable, as in they don’t try to manipulate data to mislead their readers.

This week RAJAR, the radio industry’s audience measurement body, published its latest figures for the quarter to December 2009. The results make bleak reading for the BBC Asian Network.

Asian Network Listeners

Asian Network Listener Hours

In July 2009 the BBC Trust singled out the BBC Asian Network for criticism in its annual report. The station had lost 1/5 of its audience in a year despite spending £25m.

The Evening Standard at the time carried a report by Amar Singh stating that the Asian Network was under threat of closure because of its poor performance:

BBC’s £25m Asian station faces axe after audience plunges

It now seems that closure of the troubled station is all but inevitable. The BBC confided their worries to the Media Guardian on Wednesday before the Rajar results, and the Asian Network itself has been  briefing on panic schedule changes to reputable Asian Media news organisation BizAsia.

Managing Editor of the Station Vijay Sharma has been ‘in hiding‘ as the station’s demise has become public knowledge.

Last year, members of MixTogether drew up a proposal for the Asian Network. It was an idea for a show aimed at mixed race couples, who often struggle when traditional Asian family values are ranged against them. Our proposal was inspired by our work with genuine mixed couples. It was backed by the Equalities and Human Rights Commission, Jasvinder Sanghera of Karma Nirvana, Parveen Bird of the Big Issue, mixed race charity People In Harmony and MPs Ann Cryer and Vince Cable. Their letters of support accompany the proposal.

The Asian Network dismissed our idea out of hand.

As with all progressive ideas that the Asian Network could have helped to introduce within the Asian community, our idea was ignored in favour of outdated talkshow debates where the same few callers were always invited to share their negative thoughts on progressive matters. Many of the Asian callers to their mixed race debates expressed opinions that would not have been out of place in a BNP meeting, but this was deemed acceptable in the name of balance. No other BBC station would have allowed such views on air if they had been expressed by white people.

How much more could the Asian Network have done to tackle the scourges of forced marriage, honour crime and disownment that blight the lives of many of their target audience?

It seems that the Asian Network audience was also looking for more from the station than outdated debates and poorly produced underground music, and they have been voting with their feet. Meanwhile the BBC’s black music station 1Xtra enjoys solid ratings, and their artists are Migraine Skanking all the way into the charts.

As Rumbold on Pickled Politics has observed, “there isn’t as much to say about the Asian Network as one might think; it is expensive and losing listeners”

The Network has had the time, money and goodwill to sponsor progressive ideas within the Asian community.

It has squandered all three.

It deserves to fail.