Latest news about Smooth Radio

Aled Jones and Russell Watson switch on Smooth’s Christmas Lights

Aled Jones and Russell Watson joined Smooth North West breakfast presenter Darren Parks to switch on the studio’s Christmas lights. Over 2000 lights were turned on as the duo talked about taking part in the station’s Carols on the Cobbles event with Coronation Street: The Tour. Speaking to Darren Parks, Aled said: “I’m very excited to be singing on the cobbles. I found out that Chesney had named his baby Aled after it was born in a cable car above the Great Orme in Llandudno because he was Walking in the Air!”

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...

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...

Smooth Radio regional Breakfast presenters confirmed

Smooth Radio is launching its national Drive show with Angie Greaves this week as a number of regional presenters leave the network. The brand will keep the majority of its current breakfast presenters with just one moving from Drive to Breakfast. Global (and Communicorp) previously announced Breakfast would be networked at some point this year, but later changed strategy to network Drive instead. Therefore, last week saw final regional Drive shows for Clive Warren (north east), John Mellis (Glasgow), Charlie Jordan...

Heart 90s to launch on national DAB digital radio

Global is transforming its Heart 90s playlist service into a full national radio station on DAB, with Kevin Hughes hosting breakfast. It’s the first of five new services all going national on DAB in the next week – as teased by Global over the last few days. Heart 90s will officially launch tomorrow at 6am – Thursday 29th August – with non-stop music from the 90s and joins Heart, Heart Dance and Heart 80s which all have live national breakfast shows from Leicester Square. Kevin Hughes currently hosts Saturday afternoons on Heart, and previously presented Drive on Heart South Wales...

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.

Gold returns to AM in Peterborough and Northampton

Gold is returning to AM in Peterborough and Northampton using the frequencies currently used by Smooth Radio. Ofcom has approved two format change requests, to change the Character of Services from an easy listening featuring lifestyle oriented speech, targeting an audience aged 50-plus to classic pop hits targeted primarily at 35-54 year-olds. The move means all programming on 1332AM in Peterborough and 1557AM in Northampton will be shared with all other AM stations in the Gold network in England, rather than the Smooth network.

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.

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.