A student radio station has been told to change its call sign after officials noticed its acronym spelt "arse".

Altered Radio Sound Education, which is managed by a team of students from Oxford University, recently applied for a licence to broadcast on FM.

The team had successfully broadcast online as Oxford Student Radio from September 2001 to May 2002 and they were hoping to get their mix of local music and satirical documentaries back on the airwaves.

Their plans were scuppered, however, by the Radio Authority, which instead gave a temporary licence to the Asian station, Awaaz Radio, and ordered the students to change their call sign before reapplying.

Station manager Tim Hancock, a physics students at Oriel College, claimed nobody on the production team realised the call sign could cause offence.

Radio Authority spokesman Julie McCatty said: "We did ask them to come up with a different suggestion because we are required to ensure that call signs that may cause offence should not be used."