Latest news about BBC Radio 5 Live

Audio and Radio Industry Awards 2020 – Winners

The winners at the Audio and Radio Industry Awards 2020 have been revealed at an event at the London Palladium. The BBC took home 17 awards including Emma Barnett for Best Speech Presenter on BBC Radio 5 Live, Radio 1 Breakfast with Greg James for Best New Show, The 1Xtra Breakfast Show with Dotty forBest Music Breakfast Show and Elis James and John Robins for Funniest Show on BBC Radio 5 Live. Bauer Media radio brands were recognised on the night with Absolute Radio winning Gold for their coverage for Mental Health Awareness Week as well as their regional station Forth 1 who won Best Local Radio Show...

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...

5 Live names Julie Cullen as new Managing Editor

BBC Radio 5 Live has appointed Julie Cullen from 6 Music as its new Managing Editor. She replaces Heidi Dawson, who was recently promoted to Controller of 5 Live, and will assist Heidi in shaping the editorial direction of the station. Julie is currently in the BBC 6 Music management team having worked at the station since 2002. At 6 Music, Julie has been a journalist, presenter, executive producer, editor and, most recently commissioning executive. Prior to joining 6 Music, she worked at BBC London as a journalist – and orignally joined the BBC on the Regional News Training Scheme...

RAJAR Q4 2019: New record for digital radio listening

Digital listening share has increased by 11% to a new record of 58.5%, up from 52.6% in Q4 2018 in the latest figures for Q4 2019. They were boosted by the launch of new national commercial digital stations, and the growth of listening online via smart speakers in home and DAB listening in car. Overall digital listening grew by 43.4 million hours or 8% year on year. Listening via online and apps grew by 28.5 million hours (or by 30%) to now account for 12.5% of all listening and 21.5% of digital listening...

RAJAR Q4 2019: London and national brands round-up

Coverage of the general election helped 5 Live, Radio 4 and LBC each add half a million listeners across 2019. 5 Live is up from 4.9m to 5.4m in the Q4/2019 RAJAR listening figures, while Radio 4 has added a similar amount, rising from 10.4m a year ago to 10.9m now. LBC, including new digital station LBC News, posts a record high of 2.7m listeners (up more than half a million year on year), while talkRADIO is up more than 40% from 12 months ago to now have 433,000 listeners a week – another record high for the Wireless station...

Louise Cooper and Mickey Clarke to leave 5 Live

Sean Farrington will be the sole presenter of Wake Up To Money from March as BBC Radio 5 Live confirms Louise Cooper and Mickey Clarke are leaving. The changes are part of the ongoing BBC cuts, which also includes the end of Mornings Reports, as revealed by RadioToday last week. A BBC spokesperson told us: “Louise and Mickey are brilliant journalists who will be missed by listeners and colleagues alike. Mickey has been at the station since it started in 1994 and is a 5 Live legend...

Team announced for Six Nations on BBC Radio 5 Live

The BBC has announced details of its coverage for the Six Nations 2020 which includes live commentary of every home nation’s game on the radio. And for 2020, there’s a new Women’s Rugby edition of Rugby Union Weekly hosted by Sara Orchard and Philippa Tuttiett alongside the return of Rugby Union Weekly podcast with Ugo Monye, Chris Jones, Danny Care and Chris Ashton. Every home nation’s men’s game will be broadcast live on BBC Radio 5 Live or 5 Live Sports Extra throughout the competition. Live commentary of every England Women’s game will be broadcast on 5 Live Sports Extra or online, with highlights on the BBC Sport website...

Brexitcast to end as UK departs EU this month

BBC political podcast Brexitcast is to finish later this month after two and a half years, RadioToday understands. Formed following the 2017 election on the back of the success of ‘Electioncast’, hosts Adam Fleming and Chris Mason were subsequently joined by the BBC’s political editor Laura Kuenssberg and Europe editor Katya Adler. As well as weekly episodes of the podcast, there have been ’emergency Brexitcasts’ to cover the Brexit story from Westminster and Brussels. In total more than 150 episodes have been recorded, with many also airing on BBC Radio 5 Live...

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...

New direction for the sound of BBC Local Radio

All BBC local radio stations are getting a different sound for 2020 with a new jingle and imaging package from ReelWorld Europe. The first station to broadcast the new sound was the first BBC local radio station – BBC Radio Leicester – on Monday 6th January. A new strapline has been created “The Sound of [area] and all the music you love” along with an updated six-note logo. The previous network-wide package, produced by Mcasso, also featured a six-note logo, with listeners left to work out the words to match...