Latest news about Absolute Radio Country

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...

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.

Matilda New replaces Emma Jones at Signal 1 Breakfast

Former Capital Birmingham breakfast co-host Matilda New has been hired by Signal 1 to co-host Breakfast. She will replace Emma Jones, who has moved on to focus on her television work and weekly Country Hits Radio programmes. Emma will continue to cover at the station during holidays. Matilda said: “I can’t wait to join Foxy on Signal 1 breakfast and look forward to being part of the Signal team!”.

Launch details and schedule for Country Hits Radio

Bauer’s newest radio station, Country Hits Radio, has launched this morning at 10 with Chris Young’s Raised on Country. Well known country music radio host Baylen Leonard kicked off proceedings and was joined by fellow station host Una Healy from The Saturdays. The full schedule is below, and includes Jennie longdon on Breakfast and Lou Nash in the afternoons. Later today, Ty Bentli will be broadcasting his 5pm show from The Academy of Country Music Awards in Las Vegas.

Bauer boss calls for collaboration and respect in radio

Bauer Media UK’s CEO Paul Keenan has called for the whole radio industry to unite so that the sector can continue to prosper, saying there’s never been a better time in commercial radio. He was speaking in the opening session at this year’s RadioDays Europe event in Lausanne, Switzerland – where he also revealed that 40% of Bauer’s streaming of radio in the UK comes from smart speakers.

Bauer Media to launch Country Hits Radio via local DAB

Bauer is starting its third new radio station this year as Country Hits Radio gets ready to launch on a number of DAB multiplexes in the UK. Country Hits Radio launches on April 5th via DAB in London, Birmingham, Manchester, Liverpool, Leeds, South Yorkshire, Lancashire, Humberside, Tyne & Wear, Teesside, Glasgow,, Edinburgh, Tayside, Inverness and Ayr. Bauer is to remove Kiss Fresh from the above local multiplexes to make room for Country Hits Radio.