Radio News

Smooth Radio poaches Angie Greaves for national Drive

Smooth Radio is changing tactics and keeping its regional breakfast shows, as Magic’s Angie Greaves joins Global to present a national drivetime show. The UK’s biggest radio group had planned to network everything except the 4-7pm slot on Smooth as it has done with Capital – and is about to with Heart, which launches its national breakfast show next week. But now Global says breakfast shows on Smooth will be locally-produced as the drive show goes national instead.

James Cridland’s International Radio Trends: Where should a radio station be? And RAJAR Q1 2019

James Cridland, radio futurologist, is a conference speaker, writer and consultant. He runs the media information website media.info and helps organise the yearly Next Radio conference. He also publishes podnews.net, a daily briefing on podcasting and on-demand, and writes a weekly international radio trends newsletter, at james.crid.land.

Tina Hobley leaves Smooth Radio’s London drive show

Smooth Radio’s drivetime presenter in London, Tina Hobley, is leaving the show after two and a half years but will keep her weekend slot. The former Coronation Street and Holby City actor joined the station in 2013, and added the weekday 4-7pm programme in the capital in January 2017 when she replaced Anthony Davis. Global has told RadioToday she’s leaving the daily show in mid-July to spend more time with her children, but will remain on the Sunday 10am-2pm slot across the Smooth network.

Tony Dibbin leaves Gold ahead of upcoming station changes

Gold’s breakfast show presenter Tony Dibbin is leaving the station after 10 years on the programme. Staff were told of the changes today and Tony will host his last show on Friday morning (24th May). Weekend presenter David Andrews will cover the show ‘for the next few weeks’ ahead of further changes expected to be announced by Global.

Extra Welsh programmes and presenters for Capital Cymru

Capital Cymru is dropping networked programmes in favour of providing more Welsh programmes and presenters. The weekday line-up from tomorrow, Thursday 23rd May, includes Alistair James (current breakfast presenter) on from 6am till 10am. He’ll be followed by a new Welsh mid-morning show from 10am with Dafydd Griffith, before Kev Bach’s 2pm – 7pm weekday show. Kev was previously on-air for six hours weekdays from 1pm till 7pm.

Heart drivetime show presenters announced by Global

Global has announced who will present each of the regional Heart drivetime shows when the brand starts a networked breakfast show on June 3rd. The number of regional afternoon programmes will be halved, with a number of breakfast presenters making the move to drivetime, whilst some current weekend and local drivetime presenters will transfer.

Heart presenters start saying goodbye to listeners

Presenters at a number of Heart stations are starting to tell listeners they are leaving their radio shows at the end of May. They are tweeting farewell messages as each local or regional breakfast show is about to go networked, and some drive presenters replaced. In a bold move never undertaken at this scale before, Global is about to change every breakfast show and almost every drive show on its large network of Heart stations outside London.

RAJAR Q1 2019: Regional and local radio facts and figures

Whilst the national news is all about new radio stations and breakfast shows, the main headlines in the regions are about one of Bauer’s latest brands. The first results for Greatest Hits Radio in England show a mainly downward trend following the rebrand from City 2 stations last quarter.

RAJAR Q1 2019: Milestones reached for DAB and digital radio

Digital listening has reached a new record share of 56.4%, up from 50.9% in Q1 2018, according to RAJAR Q1 2019 data released today. The annual growth of 5.5 percentage points to 56.4% from 50.9% represents the strongest ever percentage point growth in digital listening platform share since records began. Digital reach increased by over 2 million listeners to 36.3 million and overall digital listening grew by 55.9 million hours or by 10.7% year on year.

RAJAR Q1 2019 – Zoe & Chris plus national and London radio round-up

Chris Evans and Virgin Radio both reached over a million listeners in the first quarter of 2019. The digital station’s audience has almost trebled compared with the last period of 2018 thanks to the arrival of Evans from Radio 2. In Q1/2019 it posts a weekly reach of 1.3m and total hours of 7.765m. A year ago those figures were 427,000 and 1.632m. Last quarter they were 447,000 and 1.686m.