BBC Bangla Radio Ends 81-Year Legacy

BBC Bangla Radio Ends 81-Year Legacy

Blog Article

Radio was widely used in Bangladesh prior to the Internet’s broad adoption. We all have a lot of radio-related memories. We still remember the good old days of listening to music on the radio at night, watching the news with the whole family, watching cricket matches all day, and listening to the commentators. Just a few days ago, we used to listen to the radio while doing arithmetic, and the tea shop on the neighborhood corner used to have the radio playing. presently, however, things are different. Radio is no longer as important to us as it once was.

But we have a history of being radio-dependent. Radio played a key role in these movements, including the language movement, the liberation war, the mass uprising, and the opposition to the Ershad regime. In particular, the faith and confidence of the nation’s citizens was also known as BBC Bangla Radio broadcasting. The 81-year history of BBC Bangla ended in 2023. Today, we will discover the reasons behind BBC Bangla Radio’s announcement of broadcasting cessation, enshrouded in precious memories.



BBC Bangla History

BBC Bangla Radio has a long history. In undivided India, the BBC Bangla radio program started on October 11, 1941, with a weekly 15-minute broadcast in Bengali. In 1965, news broadcasting got its start. In 2005, the website for BBC Bangla was launched. According to agreements with Bangladesh Betar between 1994 and 2008, BBC Bangla used to broadcast Bangla and English shows every day for 12 hours on the FM band in Dhaka, Chittagong, Rajshahi, Khulna, Sylhet, Rangpur, and Comilla, respectively.

Reasons for BBC Bangla’s closure

The BBC, or British Broadcasting Corporation, is one of the most well-known media organizations in the world. A section of the BBC that broadcasts in Bengali as a foreign language under the BBC World Service is called BBC Bangla. Radio broadcasts in 10 languages, including BBC Bangla, have been stopped by the British Broadcasting Corporation. Nonetheless, no language division has been shut down entirely; instead, it continues to function online.

BBC management has made this choice because of the high rate of inflation and the rising cost of commodities. As a result of BBC World Service’s decision, 382 vacant positions will be filled, resulting in a savings of almost 320 crore taka, or 28.5 million pounds. Additionally, BBC Four and CBBC are going online as part of the 500 million pounds in annual savings. The BBC’s primary goal in taking this action is to cut expenses.



People in this digital age rely heavily on the internet. Radio is no longer as popular. For this reason, the BBC has discontinued its ten-language radio broadcasts and moved them online. They will save money by doing this, and more people will watch. According to a 2007 BBC listener survey, the radio station had around 20 million weekly listeners in Bangladesh alone. In 2018, however, the BBC performed another listening survey, which revealed that the weekly radio audience had dropped to 2.6 million. A BBC poll on Bengali television shows was carried out in 2018. 8.5 million people watched BBC Bengali at the time, according to the poll results. In other words, radio has become less popular.

Political influences accounted for the majority of the 2006–07 increase in radio listenership. Bangladesh was going through a political crisis at that time. As usual, the nation’s citizens trusted the BBC to provide them with objective news during emergencies. Local institutions were unable to cover the wide range of topics that the BBC did at the time. For that reason, the 2007 study estimated that the BBC had a large audience.

Last words

“Whatever has a beginning must have an end,” goes a proverb. When the saying “You are listening to BBC Bangla” was heard for the final time on the evening of December 31, 2022, on BBC Bangla Radio’s “Parikrama” program, it proved that the old proverb was accurate. Thus, an arduous 81-year history has concluded. Recently, BBC Bangla has gone entirely online to satisfy the demands of its viewers and stay up with the times.

Read More: https://bstandard.info/english/bbc-bangla-radio-ends-81-year-legacy/