Down the Rabbit Hole ©2009 =Sugarock99 via DeviantArt

Last week the BBC announced last week it’s plans to close Music 6 and the Asian Network as part of it’s strategy to save money. The plan, you can read it here (or the .pdf files here and here), detail

what the future direction of the corporation ought to be.

Now, while that’s all well and good, I was a little confused about the plan when I read it. Not to mention the fact that  there is an immense amount of public outrage on the British Broadcasting Company’s decision with Bollywood stars and alike, even getting together to save the Asian Network.

“The BBC’s mission is constant and enduring: to inform, educate and entertain audiences with programmes and services of high quality, originality and value.”

FIVE EDITORIAL BBC PRIORITIES
1. The best journalism in the world
2. Inspiring knowledge, music and culture
3. Ambitious UK drama and comedy
4. Outstanding children’s content
5. Events that bring communities and the nation together

Now I love the BBC and think that they are one of the coolest publicly-funded companies out there. I mean these are the people that introduced me to Mr. Darcy (1996) and helped Pride & Prejudice change my life when I was like 11-years old.

But I’m not going to lie, this new plan is missing a few screws and logic in my opinion:-

Doing fewer things better means, on this strategy, significant changes to the BBC’s service
portfolio:

• Focusing the BBC’s website on the five content priorities
o Halving the number of sections on the site and improving its quality by closing lowerperforming
sites and consolidating the rest
o Spending 25% less on the site per year by 2013
o Turning the site into a window on the web by providing at least one external link on every
page and doubling monthly ‘click-throughs’ to external sites

• Increasing the quality of local radio: boosting investment in local news at breakfast, mid-morning
and drivetime using resources released by sharing content at other times
• Recommending the closure of Radio 6 Music: focusing popular music output on Radio 1 and an
increasingly distinctive Radio 2, using the resources released to drive digital radio in other ways
• Recommending the closure of Asian Network as a national service, and using the resources
released to serve Asian audiences better in other ways
• Recommending the closure of teen offerings BBC Switch and Blast!

The entire plan expects about £600m ($893m) to be diverted to other forms of the organization’s programming.

Music 6

Music 6 is a platform for undiscovered and up-and-coming artists. The stations is one of passion and intelligence because it found a way to gather quite a few fans and a following regardless of the fact that it has a relatively small budget.

Launched in 2002, it was actually the first publicly-funded radio station the BBC launched in about 32-years. The idea behind the radio station is to play “alternative” types of music, such as indie, classical dance, funk, punk, jazz etc. etc. etc.

Not only that, but the station has been known for supporting independent labels.

According to the BBC, the station’s average listener age is 36, which is too low for what their were aiming for. Also, that the station is failing to appeal to a larger female audience.

Jay Sean & Lil' Wayne in '"Down"

Asian Network

The BBC Asian Network is a flagship Asian music station in the United Kingdom which broadcasts Asian (India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka etc.,) news and entertainment. It’s “parent” radio station is Radio 1. While the network broadcasts mostly in English, it also has programs in five South Asian languages, including Hindi/Urdu, Punjabi/Panjabi, Bengali, Gujurati and Potwari.

The station targets the largest minority group in the United Kingdom. Americans, think of it this way: Hispanics are to the United States, what the South Asian diaspora is to the United Kingdom.

They make up roughly about four percent of the nation’s population, while blacks are at two percent, and mixed races are at 1.2 percent. (source) Also, 4.4 percent of the nation’s population identify themselves as either Muslim, Hindu or Sikh. (source)

According  to the BBC, the Asian Network had lost about 20 percent of it’s listeners in one year and was falling quickly. Not only that, but the report, released in July 2009, stated that the Asian network is one of the most expensive networks on the BBC’s budget.

Doctor Who via BBC.

Why Cutting Music 6 &

the Asian Network Are

Simply STUPID & AGEIST

The BBC is aiming to save money, lure a younger audience, appeal to women and  take back some of the listeners it has lost in the past few years. But as you’ll see below there are holes in their strategy which are misguided, redundant and oddly quite ageist.

According to the Guardian UK,

The Times reports that the BBC2 budget will be boosted by £25m and the channel will be directed to go upmarket. This will be funded by 25% reduction in the corporation’s budget of £100m for foreign acquisitions.

$50 million is  a lot of money to boost one station.

I read a fabulous article on The Independent entitled, “Is BBC 6 Music Actually Worth Saving?” and it has this fabulous paragraph at the end of it that hammers the point home,

Now, let’s see the BBC justify the existence of 1Xtra, another digital station costing even more than 6 Music – nearly £10 million a year – delivering only 530,000 listeners and playing contemporary urban music – 50 Cent, Alicia Keys, Black Eyed Peas – already on the Radio 1 playlist.

On that note, The Gurdian UK also points out an apparent obsession with age plaguing the BBC

The BBC is obsessed with age. Hence the decision to keep 1Xtra, a digital station with fewer listeners than 6 Music, because it’s for young adults. But age is the wrong way to define a station like 6 Music, because how old you are has nothing to do with it. It’s about taste. You either like non-mainstream music, or you don’t.

Scottish music producers Tigerstyle, echoed exactly what the BBC is failing to understand in their diverse and multi-ethnic nation

It is going to be a huge step backwards, I would say maybe 10 or 20 years, if the Asian Network is taken off air.

Positive and Possible

Alternatives to the

Problems

SO YOU WANT TO SAVE MONEY???

• Repositioning, Reprogramming and Realigning

I don’t quite understand why no one has thought about simply revamping the current state of either radio stations, the Asian Network in particular.

It’s called research folks, crowd-sourcing so on and so forth.

You know? You find out WHAT EXACTLY your listeners want and what would make your project successful and then YOU DO IT.

The entire axe of the Asian Network  in particular screams pushing the cart-before-the-horse to me. Obviously, if the audience numbers dropped 20 percent, something is wrong. Find out what that is/was and fix it.

Simple.

via WeHeartIt.com

• Jonathan Ross

Umm, do you really need to pay him that much?

I mean I have nothing against Wossy, don’t know the guy and don’t watch his show — so let me phrase it to you this way: if you’re paying someone more than anyone will ever pay him, you obviously are doing budget cuts, he’s the highest paid on your payroll and you are trying to save money — why don’t you give Mr. Ross a pay cut?

… because that would just make dollars and sense.

$20,000 USD per show is a lot of money — especially, since Mr. Ross plans to leave the BBC anyway. (source)

umm, hello?

If you’re publicly funded, don’t you set the terms of his contract? He’s leaving you, why would you uphold it to such a degree if you obviously can’t afford it?

• Do you really need four or more pop stations?

Right, so as pointed out above, the BBC justifies closing down Music 6, which has more listeners than 1xtra, a different playlist than Radio 1, fewer women and apparently too young of an age group, right?

But yet, they can’t justify (yet), keeping the likes of 1xtra, which has less listeners than Music 6, a younger demographic and also has half of the same playlist as Radio 1.

Are you seeing where I’m going with this?

Music 6 = bigger audience & unique

1xtra = similar to Radio 1 and smaller audience

… I thought so.

• BBC Drama — How many times do you need to reinvent the wheel?

I love Jane Austen, I love Shakespeare, I love Heathcliff — and when you have epic adaptations produced by the BBC that are still successful and have a following UP TO THIS DAY, I don’t quite understand the need to reinvent the wheel and do them again.

Case and point: Pride & Prejudice and Sense & Sensibility.

Produced in 1995, starring Jennifer Ehle and Colin Firth, it’s arguably the most popular adaptation of the beloved novel…ever. So much so, if the 10th anniversary was actually pushed with a proper public relations plan, I’m sure it would have brought in far more money than it did.

Now, that being said, you look at the marketplace and behold! you see the Emma Thompson version of Sense & Sensibility, which happens to star an A-List British cast: Emma Thompson, Alan Rickman, Hugh Grant and Kate Winslet. Yes, it’s older, but yes, it also won an Oscar, has a following and is the typically preferred version of the film.

Then, let’s think about North & South, the 2004 and possibly only version of Elizabeth Gaskell’s novel starring Richard Armitage and Daniela Denby-Ashe. Underestimated by the BBC, the film was a sleeper that turned into a massive hit, throwing Armitage’s Mr. Thornton into Colin Firth’s Mr.Darcy-like stature. We are talking about a mini-series that nearly crashed the bbc.co.uk server when it aired because of its positive reception.

My point?

Why would the BBC reinvent the wheel with already popular film adaptions (Sense & Sensibility from Emma Thompson isn’t theirs, but it’s still the most popular), not look for more money WHERE THEY CAN (Pride & Prejudice could have had a massive anniversary plan behind it) and NOT look for new prospects and ventures where there is NEW money to be had (more ventures like North & South)?

I don’t get it.

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I’m sure there are countless more examples out there, but this is simply what struck me when I head about this new project by the BBC.

Hopefully, they’ll keep my Doctor Who running … or I’ll be sad.

The new BBC plan hurts their audience and goes against exactly what they are aiming to do. Period.

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By the way, if you want to protest about the shutting of 6 Music or the Asian Network, write to trust.enquiries@ bbc.co.uk

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Sasha Muradali runs the ‘Little Pink Book’ . She holds a B.S. in Public Relations from the University of Florida with a minor in Dance (’07) and an M.A. in International Administration from the University of Miami (’08). She loves Twitter and all things social media, so you should find her @SashaHalima or get a copy of the ‘Little Pink Book’ delivered to your Kindle.

Copyright © 2009-2010 Sasha H. Muradali. All Rights Reserved.