Latest news about BBC Asian Network

Radio 1 makes Stay Home Live Lounge to raise money

BBC Radio 1 is to record its biggest ever Live Lounge for charity amid the coronavirus crisis, featuring Dua Lipa, Chris Martin, AJ Tracey, Rita Ora, Ellie Goulding and more. The Stay Home Live Lounge will be broadcast for the first time across Radio 1, Radio 2, 1Xtra, 6Music and Asian Network from midday on Thursday 23 April and will see some of the music industry’s biggest stars collaborate on a cover of Foo Fighters’ ‘Times Like These’ to raise money for charities, with the accompanying video to receive its world exclusive premiere during BBC One’s The Big Night In...

BBC Radio stations unite for Great British Singalong

The BBC’s national music stations are uniting on Thursday for the Great British Singalong designed to lift the nation’s spirits. BBC Radio 1, Radio 2, 6 Music, 1Xtra and the Asian Network will come together at 9am this Thursday, with each station bringing along one song that they think the public will love to join in with, wherever they are. Greg James will be leading the singalong on Radio 1 with Dermot O’Leary (who is covering for Zoe Ball) on Radio 2, Lauren Laverne on 6 Music, Dotty on 1Xtra, and Harpz Kaur on the Asian Network. Ahead of Thursday morning, each station will be asking their listeners which track they should bring to the singalong, but the final song choices will lie with each of the presenters...

talkSPORT and BBC win at Sports Journalism Awards

BBC Radio 5 Live, BBC World Service, talkSPORT and a number of BBC local radio stations picked up awards at the Sports Journalism Awards in London this week. talkSPORT won the blue ribbon Network of the Year award with Jim White and Natalie Sawyer’s mid-morning show, White & Sawyer winning Best Radio Show/ Audio of the Year. The station’s Bloodgate documentary was highly commended with a silver accolade for its investigation into the rugby fake blood scandal following talkSPORT’s move into specialist documentaries this year...

Shortlist out for Audio and Radio Industry Awards 2020

The shortlist for this year’s Radio Academy’s ARIAs have been announced at an event at News UK headquarters in London. Presenters getting nominated include Chris Evans, Greg James, Stephen Nolan, Zoe Ball and Frank Skinner. Bauer leads the Commercial Radio nominees with just over two dozen, whilst we count that News UK has around 15. Global isn’t mentioned due to not submitting any entries once again this year. The rest of the shortlist includes newspapers, independent podcasts, independent producers and presenters, along with a few local radio stations including...

RAJAR Q3 2019: London and national brands round-up

Zoe Ball has lost another 364,000 listeners to her BBC Radio 2 breakfast show in the latest radio listening figures from RAJAR. It means more than a million weekly listeners have switched off since she took over the breakfast show from Chris Evans in January. In the period 24th June to 15th September 2019 (Q3/2019), Radio 2 breakfast had a weekly reach of 7.902m – that’s down from 8.266m in Q2 and 9.047m in Q1.While Zoe is still the presenter of the UK’s biggest breakfast show, the figures are the lowest for the slot in a decade – since...

Ahadadream, Sandunes, DJ Firestarr and anu lead the new line-up for BBC Asian Network’s Residency

BBC Asian Network has announced the line-up for Asian Network’s Residency, a show that champions the next generation of fresh DJ talent. The strand brings listeners the biggest names in dance music, from the underground to the arena - with Ahadadream, Sandunes, DJ Firestarr and anu forming the Residency team from October 2019. Kicking off with London-based producer and DJ Ahadadream on 6 October, the Asian Network Residency will feature cutting-edge DJs and producers from the UK rotating each week on a Sunday night between 11pm-1am.

Record listening figures for Greg James and Dotty on Radio 1 and Radio 1Xtra

Latest Rajar data (Q2 2019, 1 April - 23 June 2019) shows Radio 1 and Radio 1Xtra have drawn in more listeners each week. BBC Radio 1 had a weekly reach of 10.56 million listeners aged 10+, an increase from 10.18m last quarter and 10.25m last year. BBC Radio 1Xtra also saw increases this quarter, with 1.17 million weekly listeners (10+) up on 1.13m last quarter and 1.11m last year. Highest number of listeners for Radio 1 Breakfast with Greg James as he adds a quarter of a million new listeners since he started last year...

RAJAR Q2 2019: London and national brands round-up

Zoe Ball has lost more than three quarters of a million listeners to her BBC Radio 2 breakfast show, according to the latest audience research from RAJAR. The show’s reach is down 781,000 quarter-on-quarter to 8.266m for the three months survey period up to the 23rd June 2019. In Q1/19 she had 9.047m listeners; in Q2/2018 Chris Evans reached 9.038m. Radio 2’s audience at breakfast is now the lowest its been since Q3/2010, when Evans was fairly new in the job.

Zoe Ball joins top earners list at the BBC

New BBC Radio 2 breakfast show host Zoe Ball has joined the BBC big earners top 10 list whilst Jeremy Vine took at £110k pay cut. Vanessa Feltz also makes it inside the top 10 list, which this year includes three women for the first time, along with Claudia Winkleman. Chris Evans is still in the list, as it covers the period from April 2018 to March 2019, so will only represent nine months of work. He got £1.25m for 150 editions of the Breakfast Show (or £8.3k per programme).

RAJAR Q1 2019 – Zoe & Chris plus national and London radio round-up

Chris Evans and Virgin Radio both reached over a million listeners in the first quarter of 2019. The digital station’s audience has almost trebled compared with the last period of 2018 thanks to the arrival of Evans from Radio 2. In Q1/2019 it posts a weekly reach of 1.3m and total hours of 7.765m. A year ago those figures were 427,000 and 1.632m. Last quarter they were 447,000 and 1.686m.