Radio News

Global announces the return of Capital’s Jingle Bell Ball

The first acts for Capital’s Jingle Bell Ball 2019 were announced by Roman Kemp on the breakfast show on Monday morning, with more to be announced during the week. DJ Jax Jones, Liam Payne, Aitch, isLauv, Jonas Blue, Ava Max, Young T & Bugsey, and Rita Ora are on the line-up so far for the two-night event in December. Ashley Tabor-King OBE, Founder & Executive President of Global, said: “The countdown to Capital’s Jingle Bell Ball is well and truly on! We have another amazing show in store for our listeners with some of the hottest" ...

BBC Radio 2 secures world exclusive first play of new George Michael song

On Wednesday 6 November, the Zoe Ball Breakfast Show on BBC Radio 2 will broadcast the world exclusive first play of a new song from George Michael. The track, entitled This Is How, is from the soundtrack of the forthcoming film Last Christmas, a festive romantic comedy inspired by and featuring the music of George Michael and Wham!. Zoe Ball says: "I was, and am, a huge Wham! and George Michael fan and even though he is no longer with us, his music remains a joy to us all. I’m honoured to be premiering this previously unheard song from George on my breakfast show." ...

Heart extra turns into Heart extra Xmas

Heart extra will be playing non-stop Christmas songs for the next two months as it transforms into Heart extra Xmas. Global’s only annual festive station is once again promising the very best feel good festive hits non-stop, 24/7. Heart extra Xmas says it has “All the festive favourites including Mariah Carey’s All I Want for Christmas Is You, Wham!’s Last Christmas and Band Aid’s Do They Know it’s Christmas? will help provide the perfect soundtrack to the festive period, as the countdown to the big day starts right now.”

BBC Local Radio comes together for Brexit Special

BBC Local Radio’s planned network programme Brexit Special will go ahead on Thursday evening despite Brexit being postponed. The programme, on 39 local stations, will be hosted by BBC journalist Adrian Goldberg and BBC North West political editor Nina Warhurst and will gather opinions from the public on what’s happening. Local Radio political reporters and presenters will be based across the country capturing the mood of the public from Merseyside, Brighton, Luton, Devon, Preston and York – as well as guests from business and agriculture communities...

Matt Lucas and David Walliams return to BBC Radio 4

A special edition of Little Britain, called Little Brexit, will be broadcast on BBC Radio 4 this week. It’ll be the first time in almost 10 years that Matt Lucas and David Walliams will be back on the station, where it first broadcast in 2000. Little Brexit will broadcast on BBC Radio 4 on Thursday 31 October at 1830 and will catch up with many of Matt and David’s characters to see how the hottest topic of modern British history is affecting their lives. Characters we’ll be hearing from include Dafydd, Vicky Pollard, Emily Howard, Marjorie Dawes, Mr Mann, and Lou and Andy...

Manx Radio secures extra funding to continue operating

Manx Radio has been successful in its Report to the Isle of Man Government, Tynwald to secure the future of the service. The station will now get almost £1m in 2020 after Tynwald approved a £95,000 increase. In October 2018, a Tynwald session into the funding and structure of the Islands Public Service Broadcaster was unable to reach a conclusion on the future of Manx Radio. At a further meeting in January 2019, Tynwald instructed Manx Radio’s board to go and write a report to “develop a sustainable operational and funding plan to be...

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 Q3 2019: Regional and local radio facts and figures

The big stories from the regions are that Heart has increased its audience despite rolling out a national breakfast show, and Greatest Hits Radio stations are taking a beating under their new names. Global - For the Heart brand, overall, it has seen an increase in listeners since taking its breakfast show national. It now has 9.8m weekly reach compared with 9.7m last quarter and 9.6m last year. In the regions, seven Hearts went up including Scotland and North East England, nine went down including West Midlands and two stayed the same...

John Humphrys joins Global to cover Classic FM Breakfast

Former BBC Radio 4 presenter John Humphrys is joining Global after over 30 years at the BBC. He will host Classic FM’s More Music Breakfast from Monday 28th October to Friday 1st November inclusive from 6am to 9am, as he stands in for regular presenter Tim Lihoreau. Moira Stuart, who presents the breakfast news bulletins, will also be with him for the week. John Humphrys said: “I’m struggling to think of a greater contrast with my old job: the bliss of Beethoven and Brahms instead of Brexit and backstops! Maybe there really is another world out there!”

talkSPORT wants to start turning off AM transmitters

talkSPORT has asked Ofcom to reduce the transmission coverage of its AM national commercial radio licence by 2.4%. The regulator has provisionally agreed the changes but will carefully consider any comments from stakeholders before making a final decision because it will mean some listeners will lose their ability to receive talkSPORT on the AM band. talkSPORT says that there has been a decline in analogue listening at a rate faster than it had predicted and the listening at the sites it wants to close, based on RAJAR data, is no longer...