Spending totals over lives of the two threatened digital stations are £39.9m for 6 Music and £56.8 for Asian Network
The BBC has spent nearly £100m on the two digital radio stations it is proposing to close, BBC 6 Music and the Asian Network.
Spending on 6 Music peaked in 2008/09, the last financial period for which figures are available, with an annual cost of £9m, including £6.5m on content, £2.1m on infrastructure and support and £400,000 on distribution, according to the BBC annual report.
The Asian Network cost £12.1m over the same period, including £9.2m on programmes and other content, down from the high of £13m the BBC spent on it in 2007/08, which included £10.1m on content.
In total, the corporation has spent £39.9m on 6 Music and £56.8m on the Asian Network since 2002, when the two stations were launched on the BBC's national digital audio broadcasting (DAB) multiplex, a total of £96.7m.
6 Music's listenership has grown over the eight-year period, albeit slowly, to a record 695,000 listeners in the final three months of last year.
But the Asian Network's audience at the end of 2009 – a weekly reach of just 360,000 listeners – was its lowest since the end of 2002.
The Asian service peaked with 535,000 listeners at the end of 2004, before falling back in the following quarter and remaining largely static for the next three years, before peaking again with another 535,000 listeners at the beginning of 2008.
Since then its audience suffered another slump, despite a brief blip in the middle of 2009.
Questioned about spending on the two networks by Jeremy Paxman on BBC2's Newsnight on Tuesday, Thompson declined to put a figure on the amount of money the BBC had spent on the two stations.
'All of these services have worked for audiences,' he told Paxman. 'I don't believe any significant money was wasted.'
The proposed closure of the two stations is part of a wide-ranging strategy review by Thompson aimed at freeing up £600m to reinvest in high quality content.
Other proposals include shutting half of the BBC's web pages, cutting spending on foreign shows such as Mad Men, capping investment on sports rights and potentially selling off BBC magazines such as Top Gear.
The BBC committed to spending at least 90% of its licence fee income on 'high quality content and distribution by 2013'.
The proposals are now the subject of a 12-week public consultation by the Trust. Supporters of 6 Music have been urging listeners to make their feelings known to the Trust, whose chairman, Sir Michael Lyons, said it would 'take account' of any 'massive public concern' over the plans.
6 Music will be shut by the end of 2011, according to Thompson's review, while the Asian network will be replaced by a number of regional radio services.
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