BLACK AUDIENCES watching and listening to the BBC fell to an all-time low, new figures from the corporation reveal.
Only 73 percent of Black and minority ethnic adults tuned into the BBC on an average week, compared to 90 percent of White adults, the BBC’s new annual report shows.
The figures for 2022/23 amount to a four percent fall for BAME groups, while the White audience fell by two percent.
The ethnicity gap is even larger over the use of iPlayer, with just 53 percent of BAME people watching programmes on the App.
The growing gap between Black and White consumers of BBC output is sure to reignite debate about whether the corporation is fulfilling its public charter to serve all communities.
The decline in the Black audience comes just days after it was revealed the BBC’s diversity chief, Joanna Abeyie, had quit.
Abeyie is the third head of diversity, equity and inclusion to leave the corporation in the last five years, after Tunde Ogungbesan and June Sarpong left.
Last week a Black BBC insider told The Voice the community had a right to ask if they should be paying the licence fee if they don’t consume the output.
Black presenters and producers are anxious over the imminent announcement of the reorganisation of Black local radio shows.
It is expected that bosses will reveal details of how the Sunday night magazine shows will be reconfigured.
There was anger over the decision to ban long standing presenters from applying for their own jobs because they were freelancers not staff.
Presenters, who get paid as little as £200 a show and effectively work for free when putting the programme together, say they are only freelance because of historic under-investment in the Black shows.
The BBC has significantly cut back the number of hours of support from producers in recent years, with some local shows mainly organised by the presenter.
The corporation has refused to reveal how much they spend on Black local shows, claiming this was “commercially sensitive” information, despite boasting about how much they spend on orchestras.
The Voice has calculated the BBC spends up to £50,000 annually on all the presenters and part time producers across all ten Black programmes in the United Kingdom, serving four million Black Brits. That works out at 0.001% share of the £3.8 billion licence fee income.
We also calculated that spending on Gaelic programming was over 10,000 times better resourced per head of population compared to the Black shows.
There was also unhappiness from BBC Africa insiders over the axing of TV and radio output.
A BBC spokesperson said: “We are fully committed to serving Black audiences and we have plans in place to ensure that we are focusing our efforts appropriately and diversity is integrated into the way we commission across video and audio.
“Diversity and inclusion on air begins in our workforce and we’ve seen an increase in our Black, Asian and minority ethnic staff and leadership this year.”
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BBC T.V. and especially BBC Radio Four, regard and uses His Majesty’s African, African-Caribbean, and African-dual heritage Subjects, with the same degree of value and worth as Downton Abbey uses and regards historical props.
I am shocked that 73 percent of His Majesty’s African-heritage Subjects still watch, and take seriously the “news” from the politically Correct BBC; at a time when internet news sources are outstandingly superior; and far more comprehensive, and free from Left-wing political bias, presented as News on the BBC T.V. and BBC Radio Four.
Many of England’s African-heritage Subject are aware the BBC merely uses the skin-colour segregation we endure daily, as ammunition to protect their core minority concerns which include middle-class Feminism; Stonewall’s sexual creed, and exceptional sensitivities to Caucasian-Jewish concerns; as evidence by the shocking way the Women’s Hour Presenter Ms Barnet treated the African-heritage internet contributor, and actress, Ms Kelechi Okafor.
Ms Kelechi Okafor, who cancelled her planned live discussion on Women’s hour about the MeToo movement, describing her treatment in January 2021 as “absolutely degrading and vile.”
Ms Sarah Green from the End Violence Against Women coalition, was also on the Zoom call said the Woman’s Hour presenter should have apologised for her appalling treatment toward Ms Okafor, stating, “It was really unfair and then led to a #MeToo discussion with no ‘African-heritage’ woman’s voice.”
The Women’s Hour presenter, Ms Emma Barnett, inadvertently left her microphone on during a conversation with her producers, where she questioned critical comments about Caucasian heritage men of a certain weight in the music industry, wrongly attributed to Ms Kelechi Okafor in 2017.
In the United States Black Americans set up their own Radio and TV stations. Yet here Black Britons seem Incapable of setting our own Radio/TV or any Business up.