Latest news about BBC Radio 5 Live

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...

Opinion: RadioToday industry predictions for 2020

One thing is for sure – radio is changing at an incredible pace. Keeping up with emerging products and making full use of smart technology is key. But whilst the art of ‘input’ is changing, the ‘output’ has remained fairly static for many decades. Listeners can still hear a friendly voice on the radio at all hours of the day – the major difference is where the voice is located and when they were recorded. But let’s dig deeper down into the industry and see what 2020 might bring...

Winners announced for the 2019 Audio Production Awards

The winners have been revealed for the Audio Production Awards at a gala evening at the BFI Southbank, hosted by Tommy Sandhu. The special Gold Award went to the Mental Health Minute, coordinated by Radiocentre and produced by Somethin’ Else in 2018 and TBI Media in 2019. The Mental Health Minute was broadcast in May across hundreds of radio stations, including BBC Radio 1, Radio 2 and 5 Live, BBC Local Radio, as well as networks including Global, Bauer and Wireless and community stations. It reached a combined audience of over 40 million people, and featured His Royal Highness The Duke of Cambridge...

Kemp, Garraway, Roberts and Wright rumoured for I’m A Celeb

Radio presenters Roman Kemp, Kate Garraway, Adele Roberts and Ian Wright are being tipped to appear on this year’s series of I’m A Celebrity Get Me Out Of Here, which starts next weekend. The Sun lists the four as part of it’s rumoured line-up for the ITV reality show. Roman was on air on his Capital breakfast show with Vick Hope and Sonny Jay yesterday (Friday) as normal, but next week’s schedule lists Rob Howard and Lauren Layfield as covering breakfast across the UK...

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...