Latest news about Virgin Radio UK

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...

Former Radio City host Scott Hughes joins Virgin Radio Anthems

Former Radio City afternoon drive presenter Scott Hughes has joined Virgin Radio Anthems to host the weekday afternoon show. Scott took over the programme on November 25th and can be heard on the national digital station Monday to Friday from 2pm till 6pm slot and Saturday mornings from 10am. Talking about his new show, Scott Hughes told RadioToday: “I’m so happy to have joined such an amazing team of people, and to be on a station that plays such great music. I’m very excited about the future of the Virgin Radio UK stations in 2020.”...

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...

Detector Van advertising campaign starts for Chris Evans

A new advertising campaign for the Chris Evans Breakfast Show on Virgin Radio has kicked off. Chris, his wife Natasha, and his two sons – seven-year-old Eli and ten-year-old Noah – have filmed the new advert in the Virgin Radio ‘detector van’, styled on the old TV detector vans. In the TV ad, Chris Evans and his family are on a mission to retune the great British public’s radios. The 30-second spot which launched on Sky over the weekend sees Chris and his family drive the Virgin Radio detector van into a quiet residential...

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"...

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.

Kate Lawler to replace Matt Richardson on Virgin Radio Drive

Virgin Radio is making a few changes to its weekday schedule as Matt Richardson leaves to focus on his comedy career. Afternoon presenter Kate Lawler is replacing Matt on Drive, with Tim Cocker moving up from evenings to take over Kate’s slot. Kate said: ”Virgin Radio has an amazing buzz about it. With the legend that is Chris Evans getting the nation to work from Monday to Friday, it’s an absolute privilege to be entrusted with getting them home again at the other end of the day. I’m soooo excited to be bringing more rock and roll to the radio at drivetime!”

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.

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.