“Fears BBC England plans to kill Black and Asian voices as Ofcom says BBC is unrepresentative” by Simon Albury

Local radio programmes aimed at Black and Asian communities could disappear according to plans for BBC England revealed by Radio Today, the leading source for news on the radio industry, while the new Ofcom CEO has attacked the BBC for being unrepresentative.

The BBC’s Covid cutbacks have meant Black and Asian programmes from Bristol, Gloucester, Somerset, Berkshire & Northampton were not on air to cover the Covid impact on their BAME communities, the removal of local statues and the impact of the rise of Black Lives Matter following the George Floyd murder. 

If Black lives do matter for the BBC, it is clear Black and Asian voices matter less.

Sunday evenings 6-10pm were the slot for 14 radio shows across England for African Caribbean audiences and a similar number for Asian audiences, as well as the BBC African Caribbean network UK Black. Now they may disappear.

New Structure

In March, Radio Today reporter Roy Martin revealed BBC local radio stations were moving to a new schedule format with programmes in four-hour blocks every day. He wrote:

“The new structure will see mornings 6am to 10am, daytimes 10am to 2pm and afternoons 2pm to 6pm, with evening programmes between 6pm and 10pm followed by a Late Show 10pm till 1am and 5 Live overnight.” 

This promised doom for Black and Asian programming.

The worst fears were confirmed this month when the BBC announced 450 jobs cuts in its English regional TV news and current affairs, local radio and online news with some local radio shows to be killed. 

The BBC England cuts could drastically reduce the African, Caribbean, Asian incl. Chinese local community programming. Redundancy notices have now been issued to entire teams.

Local radio has been the entry point for many BAME journalists who have developed impressive careers. That will now be lost.

Radio Today reports BBC England boss, Helen Thomas, telling staff the BBC needed to ‘refresh, reinvent and reinvigorate’ as a result of recent events.

Commons inquiry

In, as yet unpublished, evidence to the Commons DCMS committee inquiry on the future of public service broadcasting, the Campaign for Broadcasting Equality has said support for the local journalism should be a high priority for the expenditure of public funds on public service media. It says: 

“Mass audience media may more easily pass a more vigorous public impact and value/cost test but such criteria should not dominate the future allocation of public funding for public service media.”

BBC insiders claim due to the 4 hr block schedules introduced on local radio, individual presenter website pages have been frozen, saying no episodes available so even those shows that do remain on air are hard to find.

Perhaps Ofcom will step in. The new Ofcom CEO Dame Melanie Dawes appeared before the Commons DCMS Committee on 23 June.  Dame Melanie told them the BBC was “clearly not representative on most measures, whether that is gender, ethnicity, disability and so on” adding “even if it was more representative, a lot of the decision-making is done in London and that leads to a certain London-centricity. I do not think you can avoid that being a consequence if everything is going on inside the M25 by way of decision-making.”

The BBC was not approached for comment before publication but any BBC response will be considered.