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.

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.

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.

SHORTLISTED: Business Book Awards 2022 - Start Up/Scale Up Times have changed: you can launch a successful enterprise with your phone, sell through social media and tap into a whole world of opportunities. Unprepared to Entrepreneur is an honest guide to launching your own business, sharing real stories from real people who have tested, failed and won at business. It profiles the underdogs, those who brainstormed ideas whilst travelling on the bus, started a business from their phone and managed to create three income streams whilst maintaining a full-time job in the city to show you that you can do it too. From a working Google doc as your business plan, to ideation strategies that live and die off Instagram engagement; they won't teach you this at business school. Sonya Barlow takes a look at the resilience needed to make it in business, the incredible tax on mental health and the non-negotiable steps to creating a viable business. This is the ultimate guide to side hustling, freelancing and entrepreneurial freedom of the future.

The incredible Sunday Times bestseller 'Essential...A complex blend of overexcited Adrian Mole-like anecdotes mixed with shocking moments of racism and insights into Muslim religious practices' Sunday Times 'Authentic, funny and very relatable' - Sayeeda Warsi In 1997, Britain was leading the way to an exciting new world order. A funny, loveable and naïve 13-year-old Tez Ilyas from working class Blackburn wanted to be a doctor. By the end of 2001, the UK was at war with Afghanistan and Islamophobia had shot through the roof. 18-year-old Tez wasn't heading for a medical degree. In this rollercoaster of a coming-of-age memoir, comedian Tez Ilyas takes us back to the working class, insular British Asian Muslim community that shaped the man he grew up to be. Full of rumbling hormones, mischief-making friends, family tragedy, racism Tez didn't yet understand and a growing respect for his religion, his childhood is both a nostalgic celebration of everything that made growing up in the 90s so special, and a reflection on how hardship needn't define the person you become. At times shalwar-wetting hilarious and at others searingly sad, this is an eye-opening childhood memoir from a little-heard perspective that you'll be thinking about long after you've finished the last page.

Migrating Music considers the issues around music and cosmopolitanism in new ways. Whilst much of the existing literature on ‘world music’ questions the apparently world-disclosing nature of this genre – but says relatively little about migration and mobility – diaspora studies have much to say about the latter, yet little about the significance of music. In this context, this book affirms the centrality of music as a mode of translation and cosmopolitan mediation, whilst also pointing out the complexity of the processes at stake within it. Migrating music, it argues, represents perhaps the most salient mode of performance of otherness to mutual others, and as such its significance in socio-cultural change rivals – and even exceeds – literature, film, and other language and image-based cultural forms. This book will serve as a valuable reference tool for undergraduate and postgraduate students with research interests in cultural studies, sociology of culture, music, globalization, migration, and human geography.