Latest news about LBC Radio

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...

Ruth Davidson returns to radio for LBC Christmas shows

Former Scottish Conservative leader Ruth Davidson is joining LBC to host five Christmas specials next week. In An Inconvenient Ruth, the ex-radio journalist will look behind the public façade to uncover the achievements, challenges, victories and disappointments of her five guests each weeknight from 9pm till 10pm. Guests from Monday to Friday are former Chancellor-turned-Editor George Osborne, Labour peer Dame Joan Bakewell, the forensic anthropologist Professor Dame Sue Black, businesswoman Baroness Martha Lane-Fox and broadcaster Piers Morgan...

£850,000 raised at Global’s Make Some Noise gala

A number of presenters from Global’s radio brands hosted the Make Some Noise annual charity gala at London’s Finsbury Square on Monday. The event raised £850,000 for charity, as music artists including Robbie Williams, Tom Walker and Freya Ridings took to the stage to perform live in front of almost 500 special guests. Global united all its radio brands for the event – Heart, Capital, Smooth, Classic FM, LBC, Radio X, Capital XTRA and Gold – to help children and young people living with illness, disability or lack of opportunity.

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...

Global to launch 24 hour rolling news radio station

Global is taking its London rolling news service national and around the clock as it launches LBC News on D1. LBC News will be on 1152 AM in London, in addition to Global Player and social media. With the strapline “Where The News Never Stops”, the station will operate under a full news update in 20 minutes every 20 minutes format, with presenters including former Sky News presenters Martin Stanford, Lisa Aziz, Ian Payne as well as Jim Diamond. LBC London News currently broadcasts in London for 13 hours a day, with the rest of the output taken from LBC...

David Lloyd releases new Radio Secrets book

A new insider’s guide to presenting and producing powerful content for broadcast and podcast has been written by David Lloyd. David has spent 35 years in radio, mostly in management, from LBC to Virgin, Century to Galaxy, Trent to Lincs FM, Free Radio to Gem 106 and BBC. He is now offering consultancy services and producing a weekly Radio Moments podcast and regular hour-long Conversations series with radio people who have made a difference. David tells RadioToday: “I wanted to write a new book which really fitted today’s"...

Complaints against Nigel Farage Show rejected

Ofcom has rejected seven complaints made against The Nigel Farage Show on LBC for comments made by the host. During a programme on 31st March, Nigel Farage said that “Jon Snow should be attacked” during a discussion with Alastair Campbell about Brexit and the fact that the UK did not leave the European Union on 29 March 2019. The complainants felt this was “inappropriate” and “unsuitable” and potentially encouraged violence against Channel 4 News journalist Jon Snow...

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.

The week in radio: BBC 5 Live and LBC as the new PM was announced

Stanley Johnson confessed to feeling strange now his son was to be PM, while Iain Dale declared the UK irreconcilably divided. A man kept shouting. On and on, over and over, bellowing words we couldn’t quite make out. He’d go quiet for a while and then return, louder than ever, apoplectic with incoherent rage. Such was the jolly atmosphere at Westminster on Tuesday, the day Boris Johnson was confirmed as the new leader of the Conservative party. “What is that gentleman shouting, can you hear?” asked 5 Live’s Emma Barnett...