Radio 4 is hoping to increase its appeal to ethnic minorities as part of a push to reach a wider audience.Why does it need to? Doesn't the Beeb already spend money on Asian Radio?
Why, yes. In fact, there's a whole radio channel devoted to this.
The station will commission material aimed at black or Asian listeners, such as a show on patois presented by Rastafarian poet Benjamin Zephaniah.Wow! That’ll bring ‘em flocking in, I’m sure…
Station controller Mark Damazer met race equality campaigners to discuss how to make its workforce more diverse.In other words, "we can't fire them, but we can make sure when we replace them, the jobs will go to the right people, if you know hat we mean *wink*.."
He admitted there was also a lack of black and Asian presenters, but warned this will take time to change as many slots are taken by established stars.
Ashok Viswanathan, a founder of Operation Black Vote, said the meeting with Mr Damazer was ‘encouraging’ and he hoped Radio 4 would commit to making changes. ‘You look at the faces at the station and it doesn’t look like 21st century Britain,’ he said.I don't look at the faces at all, frankly. It's radio...
And as long as a presenter is entertaining, I could care less what he (or she) looks like.
But having capitulated on this, Mark is in for a bumpy ride...
12 comments:
Wot you mean wees cant tell wot there faces are like on the radio innit? Cos I cans tels strait away, if like I knows wever its like wicked or not cos wen they dont speak proppa like yous not cool wiv it.
Immigrants to our shores are failures in their own countries. I note how few "ethnic" Americans or Jamaicans flock back to Africa.
Station controller Mark Damazer met race equality campaigners to discuss how to make its workforce more diverse.
Eh? Any programme on the BBC looks like that Coke advert from the 1970s as it is.
They seem hell bent on destroying it don't they? There's a reason so many people listen to radio 4, putting up with it's lefty leanings and that reason is simply that there isn't any alternative. A 'talk' radio channel that isn't about taking endless phone calls from cabbies and hosted by big mouthed idiots who think they know it all, that broadcasts a varity of mostly intelligent and entertaining programmes. What is the alternative? Endless music stations with cretins called DJ's wasting airtime with dumb quizzes. Wht can't they just keep Radio 4 as a station for mioddle aged white British people celebrating white British culture, that others, if they want to CAN listen to. If I want Asian culture I can do Radio 7 (?) and Black culture on the relevant Black music station. Fuck me, why can't these bastards just LEAVE THINGS ALONE?
Since the 'effnick' population amounts to 7% of the total population (and to get the figure that high they had to include the Irish and Scots living in England), any attempt to reach a 'wider audience' in this way would appear doomed to failure.
Just get rid of the license fee. Make it commericial, and let it fight it out in the free market.
Mr Viswanathan and his fellow-travellers, who think it essential that Radio 4 'look like 21st century Britain', should be careful lest the British public becomes converted to this way of thinking and insists it be applied to all of our publicly-funded institutions.
Just for starters: the NHS, CPS, Home Office,Equality and Human Rights Commission, local councils across the land, must surely all have disproportionately non-white workforces deserving of the quota-mongers' attentions?
Mr Damazer "earns" £205,000 per year.
Is there a lack of black and Asian presenters such that they under-reflect their proportions in the population?
Most days I see Anita Anand, who is of course British but whose parents are not. Working lunch has Naga Munchettie (also British) but if that's an Italian name, I'll be very surprised. However, I notice that they carefully do not play the race card and do not want it to be said that they only got the job because of their colour - because they didn't.
Here's a list of just the BBC news presenters - not the other current affairs programmes. These are the ones which immediately stand out as duskier:
Darren Jordan
George Alagiah
Mishal Husain
Moira Stuart
Juilian Keane
Komla Dumor
Matthew Amroliwala
Nisha Pillai
Rageh Omaar
There were (I think I counted right) 109 names on that non-exhaustive list, and 9/109 rounds down to 8%.
The Nationals Statistics website gives the 2001 census as 87.5 per cent of the population of England and Wales (seven out of eight people) gave their ethnic group as White British.
The notes are difficult for me to understand but it must mean that respondents in the remaining 12.5%, described themselves as either not white or not British.
Suppose we make the arbitrary assumption that 5% are white but not British, ingnore the idea of anybody being Black and not British, and stick with the assumption that the remaining 8% are Black or Asian Britons.
That means the news section of the BBC is already bang on target and needs no lessons.
"Wot you mean wees cant tell wot there faces are like on the radio innit?.."
ROFL! Inspired...
"Any programme on the BBC looks like that Coke advert from the 1970s as it is."
And they think we don't notice, too...
"Wht can't they just keep Radio 4 as a station for mioddle aged white British people celebrating white British culture..."
Answered your own question there, I think!
"...should be careful lest the British public becomes converted to this way of thinking and insists it be applied to all of our publicly-funded institutions."
That's the way to fight back, isn't it? Use their crazy guidelines against them.
"That means the news section of the BBC is already bang on target and needs no lessons."
Indeed. What Op Black Vote wants, like all other pressure groups, is not fair representation but overrepresentation...
I'd like to know as what point "equality" became "diversity." I would then like to take a chainsaw to the people who did so.
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