it was the young single “hip” londoners and that was it.

for anyone outside that area it was like listening to a london station in london for london by london.

to be honest they should at least offer it to a commercial arm to see if they’re willing to take up the mantel. clubasia was a much better channel than asian network ever was. the dj’s on the bbc payroll were incredibly irritating. sonia deol is the only one with credibilty intact.

alot of the local stations around the UK do a much better job of serving the community – the channel neglected anyone aged 30 and over who wasnt into the bhangra/asian “nu music” scene.

what really hit it the most was the digital only thing. if in a few years it was done then it’d have more chance. dab still isnt widely popular – sets are cheapest around £30 but for a long time it was the £70+ mark.

i’m sure the top performers within the channel will be snapped up by others but it was a mediocre channel at best.

The BBC spunking 12 million on this is a disgrace. And they aren’t going to abandon it, jus relegate it to local radio on AM, for major asian cities like Birmingham and London.

But there are alternatives, though more music and less chat. XL Radio in Brum is very good and you can pick it up on AM as far south as the Cotswolds.

http://www.radioxl.net/

On first glance from this link it appears there are less popular stations than the stations being axed

RAJAR do collect more detailed data ie breakdown by demographics which may go towards indicating asian listeners if honing in on densely asian populated regions. But you need to be a paid subscriber to get this level of detail.

And RAJAR statistics give a ‘picture’ since they are conducted by relying on listeners keeping a manual diary and stations such as Sunrise Radio have fallen foul of RADAR results which they (sunrise ) say are not reflective of their true (higher) figures

I’d agree that, what, £4.00 out of a license fee of, what, £142.50 is significant. How is the rest of it broken down?

Just asking.

I’d like to see the same cost-benefit analysis applied to BBC Alba.

I have tried to find this out, but it beat me.

Perhaps you can provide the facts…

But as one poster pointed out … it does bring up the question about how they come up with these ‘listening figures’.

In the past i know for tv they use BARBS, which targets a few thousand houses of different demographics, cultures, around the country. But there’s never been any statistics show the diversity in the people selected. Smaller channels and stations are usually more vulnerable to low ratings with this system in place.

I find Radio 4 unbelievably dull and worthy. I can get BBC Alba – which is in Gaelic, yet another language I don’t understand.

But as long as they have a place in supporting some facet of our culture it would be woe betide anyone to suggest they are shut down. I don’t see why the Asian Network is being picked out for special treatment. It fulfils a similar function, does it not?

Sunder: no I don’t think I’ve ever seen those figures though I do try and parse these kinds of stats fairly often.

As we basically pay for it, is there a place i can go and see?

Seem’s like such a waste.

And how does the reach/use of the Asian Network compare to British Asian consumption of other BBC outlets, and non-BBC outlets?

I guess we should have a BBC Polish network,Somali network and Chinese networt too then.

The Asian Network was only ever representative of a small section of the UK Asian community anyway – those who enjoyed Bhangra, Bollywood and Adil Ray.

It gave very little coverage to Mirpuris, Gujaratis, Bengalis and South Indians. I guess that has always been it’s problem. You can’t please and cater for everyone so why pretend that you do.

At £12m odd a year, good riddance I say.

I would say ITV could also be closed down, but then we’d be without X factor which everyone but me watches and more importantly without Champions League football.

We can close down Channel 5, everyone has access to porn on the internet, why do we need Channel 5 anymore?!

Also get this, apparently there is a BBC4, why do we even need a 4th one when the two before it are surplus?!

Whilst on the topic, whats the BBC radio station which only has classical music on it? Nobody makes new classical music surely, why can’t the oldies who listen to that just stick t Vynil or CD’s or Cassettes etc?

I don’t even listen to Asian Network, i’m only defending it because it’s asian. Also because I do listen to it when in a car with a person with a rubbish music collection, that doesn’t happen to often, i tend to drive myself around.