BBC Radio 5 Live

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"Five Live" redirects here. For other uses, see Five Live (disambiguation).
BBC Radio 5 Live
BBC Radio 5 Live logo
Broadcast area Flag of the United Kingdom UK - National
Slogan "Live news, live sport - this is Five Live"
"On DAB digital radio, digital TV, downloads and online, this is 5 Live"
"More live Premier League football than anyone else"
Frequency MW: 693 kHz, 909 kHz, and on selected BBC Local Radio stations' frequencies overnight.
DAB: 12B
Freeview: 705
Tiscali TV: 606
Virgin Media: 905
UPC Ireland: 911
Live Stream Real/WM
Freesat: 706
First air date 28 March 1994
Format News and sport
Audience share 4.6% (March 2008, [1])
Owner BBC
Website www.bbc.co.uk/fivelive

BBC Radio 5 Live (formerly styled BBC Radio Five Live) is the BBC's radio service providing live BBC News, phone-ins, and sports commentaries. It is the principal radio station covering sport in the United Kingdom, broadcasting virtually all major sports events staged in the UK or involving British competitors.

It is transmitted via analogue radio on 693 and 909 kHz AM in the mediumwave band, frequencies that belonged to BBC Radio 2 from November 23, 1978 to August 26, 1990 (before that they were used in some regions of the UK by the BBC Home Service and BBC Radio 4), and on digital radio in the United Kingdom via DAB, digital satellite, IPTV and Freeview (digital terrestrial television). It is also streamed online, however due to rights restrictions, coverage of some events, especially "live" sporting events, is not available online. Some content is available online but restricted to UK users.

The station broadcasts from the News Centre at BBC Television Centre with a small office in Manchester and a team of its own reporters based around the UK. The station will be moving in 2011, as part of a larger shift of some BBC resources, to Salford.

Contents

[edit] History

The success of Radio 4 News FM during the 1991 first Gulf War led Liz Forgan to suggest in May 1993[1] the introduction of a combined news and sport network. Accordingly, the "old" Radio 5 closed down at midnight on Sunday March 27, 1994 and the new Radio 5 Live began its 24-hour service on the morning of Monday, March 28. The first voice on air was Jane Garvey, who later went on to co-present the breakfast and drivetime shows with Peter Allen. The launch was described by The Times as "slipp[ing] smoothly and confidently into a routine of informative banter"[2] and The Scotsman as "professionalism at its slickest."[3]

The tone of the channel, engaging and more relaxed than contemporary BBC output, was the key to the channel's success and would set the model for other BBC News services later in the decade. The first audiences were some four million, with a record audience of six and a quarter million.

Before the launch of digital broadcasting, the station (and Radio 5 before it) broadcast for several years on analogue satellite with near-FM quality.

Presenters that have now left the station include Danny Baker, Susan Bookbinder, Jon Briggs, Jon Champion, Adrian Chiles, Edwina Currie, Fi Glover, Nick Hancock, Brian Hayes, Peter Heaton-Jones, Jane Hill, Des Lynam, David Mellor, Louise Minchin, Paddy O'Connell, Jonathan Pearce, Nick Robinson, Sybil Ruscoe, Kate Silverton, Bill Turnbull, and Sian Williams.

In 2005 the Radio Five Live Sporting Yearbook (ISBN 0-00-721598-3) was published.

The station won five Sony Awards, one gold and four silver, in 2005 and was nominated an additional six times. The lone gold award was in the News Story Award category for its coverage of the 2004 Asian tsunami.

BBC Radio 5 Live was Official Broadcasters of the FIFA World Cup 2006 along with talkSPORT. Both stations will broadcast live Premiership commentaries from August 2007, with the 7 rights packages being shared 6 to 1 in favour of 5 Live.

A companion station, BBC Radio 5 Live Sports Extra, was launched as a digital-only service on February 2, 2002.

In August 2007, BBC Radio Five Live was renamed BBC Radio 5 Live and was given a new logo.

[edit] BBC breaking news policy

BBC policy for major breaking news events[4] has a priority list. With domestic news, the correspondent first records a "generic minute" summary (for use by all stations and channels) and then priority is to report on Radio 5 Live, then on the BBC News Channel and onto any other programmes that are on air. For foreign news, first a "generic minute" is recorded, then reports are to World Service radio, then the reporter talks to any other programmes that are on air.

[edit] Sport on Five Live

BBC Radio 5 Live broadcasts an extremely wide range of sports and covers all the major sporting events, mostly under its flagship sports banner Five Live Sport They are:

[edit] Sport on Sports Extra

As Five Live cannot accommodate all of the sports which they have rights to broadcast, they split some of it with its sister station Sports Extra, including

Sports Extra will also typically offer full broadcasts of Premier League and Home Nations football if games overlap each other. Five Live carries the first-choice match in such cases.

Despite the fact that commercial stations (such as Sky Sports) have acquired the vast majority of sports television broadcasting rights in the UK, the BBC remains dominant in radio sport with BBC Radio 5 Live and its local radio stations. Its main commercial rival for radio sports rights is TalkSPORT.

[edit] Current programmes and presenters

Regular shows as of October 2007:

[edit] References

  1. ^ BBC - Press Office - Jenny Abramsky Oxford lecture two (3 April 2007).
  2. ^ Frean, Alexandra. "Radio's new voice greets the dawn", The Times, Times Newspapers, 1994-03-29. Retrieved on 2007-03-05. 
  3. ^ McAlpine, Joan. "Alive and kicking", The Scotsman, The Scotsman Publications, 1994-03-29. Retrieved on 2007-03-05. 
  4. ^ http://www.bbc.co.uk/bbctrust/assets/files/pdf/review_report_research/impartiality_business/f2_news_submission.txt. Retrieved on 2007-06-19.

[edit] See also

BBC Portal

[edit] External links

Note that Radio 5 Live operate International and UK feeds. International feeds aren't allowed to cover certain sports events because of local radio rights to those events.

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