Radio station's concept of catering for several groups simultaneously is 'under review', says BBC chief operating officer
The BBC's Asian Network digital radio station could become a victim of the corporation's strategic review, with a senior executive admitting today that the whole concept of the service was being looked at.
Caroline Thomson, the BBC's chief operating officer, said the difficult concept of trying to 'cater for many disparate groups simultaneously' with the Asian Network was under review.
The corporation is assessing all its digital TV and radio operations as part of a wide-ranging strategic review of all activities and output by director general Mark Thompson. It is expected to lead to cuts in content and some kinds of programmes.
Caroline Thomson told the House of Lords communications committee inquiry into digital TV and radio switchover that 'one of the difficulties of the Asian service is its concept. It broadcasts in a number of different languages to an audience that varies from younger to older [listeners].
She added: 'It is trying to cater for many disparate groups simultaneously. We are wrestling with how to best serve this audience and whether one whole network is the right way to do it. It is something we are looking at.'
Thomson said the corporation remained committed to serving an Asian radio audience, but said the idea of a single station aimed at all Asian people in the UK reflected a 'rather British' view that if you 'come from the sub-continent ... you must somehow be the same'.
Launched eight years ago, the Asian Network's audience fell 15% to 357,000 in the third quarter of last year, the last available listener figures. The next official audience figures, for the last three months of 2009, will be published tomorrow .
Digital TV channels BBC3 and BBC4 are expected to survive Thompson's strategic review in their current form, and last week BBC Radio 5 Live controller Adrian Van Klaveren said he expected the Asian Network's digital radio sibling, 5 Live Sports Extra, to be unaffected.
The BBC's other digital radio services are also being reviewed. Music station BBC 6Music is also the subject of a separate review by the BBC Trust, along with BBC Radio 2.
The Asian Network has been relaunched in order to win a wider audience and been heavily marketed by the corporation. But its audience has failed to grow and is more than 100,000 listeners down on five years ago.
Thomson also said the BBC would not fund the rollout of its digital audio broadcasting (DAB) transmitter network to match the coverage currently provided by FM until the government had set a concrete date for digital switchover.
She said the further rollout – which would cost tens of millions of pounds – would also be 'subject to a licence-fee settlement which enabled us to do it'.
The BBC is adding extra transmitters to its DAB network to take its UK coverage to around 90% of the population. The FM signal is available universally, effectively meaning it is available to around 99% of people in the UK.
'We should be absolutely frank about this,' said Thomson. 'The whole of the radio industry is in a bit of a quandary. We have embarked on a digital route, we are committed to 90% and we will do that. Covering the final 10% – or the final 9% costs an awful lot of extra money. It will probably double – not quite double – the amount of money we will have to spend on DAB transmission.
'Our view on that is we would only do that – we would only feel it was value for money for licence-fee payers – if there was a commitment to analogue switchoff. To run FM and DAB systems in parallel is clearly very expensive.'
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