This ground-breaking new book provides a unique, in-depth analysis of the BBC Asian Network, the BBC’s national ethnic-specific digital radio station in the UK. Gurvinder Aujla-Sidhu offers an insight into the internal production culture at the radio station, revealing the challenges minority ethnic producers faced as they struggled to create a cohesive and distinct 'community of listeners'. Besides the differences of opinion that emerged within the inter-generational British Asian staff over how to address the audience’s needs, the book also reveals the ways in which 'race' is managed by the BBC, and how the culture of managerialism permeates recruitment strategies, music playlists and mother tongue language programmes. In-depth interviews unveil how the BBC's 'gatekeeping' system limits the dissemination of original journalism about British Asian communities, through the marginalisation of the expertise of narratives created by the network's own minority ethnic journalists.

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.

This book uncovers the revolutionary journey of British Asian radio broadcasting. It investigates how British Asian radio broadcasting began in England in the 1960s and developed into the 2000s. The book reflects on the existing literature on media and migration, particularly the issues of settlement and race relations, and examines how the BBC and the government took initiative to address these issues. It also critically analyses the need and demand of the Asian community for its own radio platform, discerning the role of the BBC’s radio initiatives, as well as other community-oriented radio experiments, in contributing to the creation of independent British Asian radio in England. This book is essential reading for anyone interested in Ethnic and Mother-tongue Radio Broadcasting, Cultural and Communication Studies, Media History and British Cultural History. It will also help broadcasters, media regulators and policy-makers understand the social and cultural context of the communities they address.

Facing redundancy from the BBC after 20 years as a reporter and news editor, Mike Curtis got a stay of execution. His salvation found him unexpectedly in charge of setting up a newsroom for the BBC radio station broadcasting to the Indian, Pakistani, Sri Lankan and Bangladeshi communities across the Midlands - the Asian Network. He stayed for 14 years. Asian Auntie-ji tells how this son of an Anglican clergyman, with a love of western music, was thrown into a new world of Bollywood and bhangra, Diwali and Vaisakhi, Mirpuri and mosques, and cricket and Kashmir. The book unravels how this unique radio station dealt with many controversial issues arising from the religious and cultural sensitivities of its audience and its staff. It reflects how the Asian Network covered riots, racism and terror, but also how it gave a voice to so many British Asians; from the geographically isolated listener on the phone-in to those who achieved fame in sport and entertainment. Mike Curtis follows the story of the Asian Network, from its roots in local radio to its UK-wide expansion - and its dealings with BBC bosses. The views of its champions and its critics are reported with honesty and good humour. The Queen, the Duchess of Cornwall, Sebastian Coe, Ravi Shankar, Jay Sean, Amir Khan, Greg Dyke, Meera Syal and Shah Rukh Khan are among those sprinkled throughout the saga, along with the Asian Network's own stars like Bobby Friction, Sonia Deol and Adil Ray. Mike Curtis describes how the team was moved around the managements of Radio 1, Radio 2 and Five Live - and how they regularly upset The Archers at Radio 4. Asian Auntie-ji is a fascinating autobiography that will appeal to an audience beyond the story of the radio station, embracing such names as Monty Python, TV's Big Brother, Brian Blessed, Carlos Santana, Boris Johnson, Judi Dench, David Blunkett, 1950s test pilot Roly Beamont and DJ Orifice Vulgatron. Those with an interest in the media, the BBC, politics, and ethnicity and the South Asian experience in the UK will find it particularly rewarding.

Ethnic media are media produced for, and frequently by, immigrants, ethnic and linguistic minority groups, and indigenous populations. These media represent a sector of the broader media industry that has seen considerable growth globally, even while many mainstream, legacy media have struggled to survive or have ceased to exist, largely due to the emergence of new communication technologies. What is missing in the literature is a careful examination of ethnic media in the digital age. The original research, including case studies, in this book provides insight into (1) what new trends are emerging in ethnic media production and consumption; (2) how ethnic media are adapting to changing technologies in the media landscape of our times; and (3) what enduring roles ethnic media perform in local communities and in an increasingly globalized world. The ethnic media that contributors discuss in this book are produced for and distributed across a variety of platforms, ranging from broadcasting and print to online platforms. Additionally, these media serve numerous immigrant, ethnic, and indigenous communities who live in and trace their origins back to a variety of regions of the world, including Africa, Asia, Europe, North America, and Oceania.

The story of British radio begins long before the birth of the British Broadcasting Company (BBC) in 1922. This book aims to tell this story through its component parts: the makers, the programs, and the policies that together shaped the development of a system of broadcasting, grounded initially in a public service ethic, and subsequently struggling toward an, at times, uneasy balance of public and commercial radio. The last ten years of UK radio history have contained more drama, change and development than in all its previous history. This second edition of Historical Dictionary of British Radio covers its history through a chronology, an introductory essay, and an extensive bibliography. The dictionary section has over 800 cross-referenced entries on issues, characters, movements and policies that have shaped radio in the United Kingdom. This book is an excellent access point for students, researchers, and anyone wanting to know more about British Radio.

Asian Underground music—a fusion of South Asian genres with western breakbeats created for the dance club scene by DJs and musicians of Indian, Pakistani, and Bangladeshi descent—went mainstream in the U.K. in the late 1990s. Its success was unprecedented: British bhangra, a blend of Punjabi folk music with hip-hop musical elements, was enormously popular among South Asian communities but had yet to become mainstream. For many, the widespread attention to Asian Underground music signaled the emergence of a supposedly new, tolerant, and multicultural Britain that could finally accept South Asians. Interweaving ethnography and theory, Falu Bakrania examines the social life of British Asian musical culture to reveal a more complex and contradictory story of South Asian belonging in Britain. Analyzing the production of bhangra and Asian Underground music by male artists and its consumption by female club-goers, Bakrania shows that gender, sexuality, and class intersected in ways that profoundly shaped how young people interpreted “British” and “Asian” identity and negotiated, sometimes violently, contests about ethnic authenticity, sexual morality, individual expression, and political empowerment.