Finding a New British Asian Sound on BBC Radio

Book excerpt: This book explores the contrasting responses to the South Asian diaspora in Britain of BBC local radio and BBC network radio. It highlights the hidden history of how BBC local radio stations developed a schedule of five thousand hours a year of programmes targeted at South Asian communities in England. Local radio stations at the periphery of the BBC built deep and influential connections with marginalised Asian communities, creating the BBC Asian Network in 1989 and played an influential part in building local social cohesion. This contrasts with central BBC policy that reveals a management culture resistant to change and unable to embrace an increasingly diverse Britain - creating a problematic legacy for the BBC. Finding a New British Asian Sound brings new insights into current debates around policy and institutional racism at the BBC, where South Asian programming on local and network radio remains at risk of closure.