BBC Radio 5 Live

BBC Radio 5 Live is the BBC's national radio service that specialises in live BBC News, phone-ins, interviews 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.

Radio 5 Live was launched in March 1994 as a repositioning of the original Radio 5, which was launched on 27 August 1990. It is transmitted via analogue radio in AM on medium wave 693 and 909 kHz and digitally via Digital Radio, television and via an internet stream. Due to rights restrictions, coverage of some events (in particular live sport) is not available on-line or is restricted to UK addresses.

The station broadcasts from MediaCityUK in Salford. The station controller is Adrian Van Klaveren, who was paid £191,000 in 2011, according to official BBC figures.

History
The success of Radio 4 News FM during the 1991 first Gulf War led Liz Forgan to suggest in May 1993 the introduction of a combined news and sport network. As a result, the BBC's fifth radio network, BBC Radio 5, was closed down. The old service's mix of sport, educational and children's programmes were merged into other services. The new BBC Radio 5 Live began its 24-hour service at 5am on Monday 28 March. 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" and The Scotsman as "professionalism at its slickest."

The tone of the channel, engaging and more relaxed than contemporary BBC output, was the key to the channel's success and 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. Among the key editorial staff involved in the design of programme formats and recruitment of staff for the new station were Sara Nathan, later editor of Channel 4 News, and Tim Luckhurst, later editor of The Scotsman newspaper and currently Professor of Journalism at the University of Kent.

In 2000, the station was rebranded with a new logo which would remain with the station for another seven years. In addition, on 2 February 2002 a companion station, BBC Radio 5 Live Sports Extra, was launched as a digital-only service to complement the range of sport and to avoid clashes; previously BBC Local Radio stations were used. Throughout this period, Five Live gained several awards including five Sony Awards in 2005; the single gold award was for its coverage of the 2004 Asian tsunami in the News Story Award category alongside another four silver awards and six nominations. The station also began to further its boundaries with the publication of the Radio Five Live Sporting Yearbook. In August 2007, BBC Radio Five Live was renamed BBC Radio 5 Live and was given a new logo in line with the rest of the BBC Radio network, and a new background design featuring diagonal parallel lines.

In 2008, the BBC announced that the station would move to MediaCityUK in Salford

Broadcast
BBC Radio 5 Live broadcasts in AM on the medium wave frequencies 693 and 909 kHz nationally, with the frequency 990 kHz used at Cardigan Bay; these frequencies had been utilised by BBC Radio 5 and were used by BBC Radio 2 previously. Uniquely to the BBC Radio network, it is the only station that is neither purely digital (such as 1Xtra, Radio 4 Extra and 6 Music) nor broadcast in analogue FM. In addition to the AM output, the station also broadcasts digitally on DAB Digital Radio, and on television through satellite services such as Sky, cable services such as Virgin Media, DTT services such as Freeview and through IPTV. The station also broadcasts programmes live through the BBC Online website and the BBC iPlayer sub-site, which allows programs to be replayed up to a week after the original broadcast. The service is also available on the Radioplayer internet site partially run by the BBC. Before the launch of digital broadcasting, BBC Radio 5 Live had broadcast on analogue satellite with near-FM quality.

For many years, the station was operated over four floors from within the News Centre at BBC Television Centre, because of the close connections between the station and BBC News, and the co-location of BBC Sport. However, as part of the corporation's plan to sell off Television Centre, the decision was made in 2008 to move BBC Radio 5 Live to the new broadcast hub at MediaCityUK. The move itself began in September 2011 and took two months. The new studios are located in Quay House over a single floor and consists of two studios, large enough for several guests, and a separate studio for large groups.

News
BBC Radio 5 live's remit includes broadcasting rolling news and transmitting news as it breaks. The BBC's policy for major breaking news events revolves around a priority list. With UK 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. As a result, BBC Radio 5 Live is often the first place to hear a breaking news story, and it is this quality that appeals to a number of listeners.

Sport
BBC Radio 5 live broadcasts an extremely wide range of sports and covers all the major sporting events, mostly under its flagship sports banner 5 Live Sport. Whilst football commentaries form the majority of live commentaries during the football season, the range of events covered by the station include:


 * Live Premier League, Football League, FA Cup, Football League Cup matches, SPL, and Scottish Cup matches
 * World Cup
 * Olympic Games
 * All Home Nations International football matches
 * Champions League (with limitations for online broadcast) and UEFA Europa League
 * FIFA Club World Cup (if British side is involved)
 * Men's Golf Majors and the Ryder Cup
 * England rugby union test matches
 * The Autumn Internationals and Six Nations Championship
 * Rugby World Cup
 * British and Irish Lions Tours
 * Aviva Premiership, Heineken Cup and EDF Energy Cup


 * Super League
 * Challenge Cup
 * Rugby League Four Nations
 * Formula One
 * Grand National
 * Cheltenham Festival, Royal Ascot and the King George VI and Queen Elizabeth Stakes
 * The Classics, the Prix de l'Arc de Triomphe and the Melbourne Cup
 * Boxing
 * World Athletics Championships, Commonwealth Games, Diamond League Athletics, European Cup, and other athletics meets
 * Wimbledon Tennis Championships
 * National Football League
 * Major League Baseball

Most non-cricket broadcasts are available online only from IP addresses within the UK as both television and radio rights are typically sold on a country-by-country basis. Often UEFA Champions League games are not broadcast live online at all due to rights restrictions imposed by UEFA. This is sometimes not the case for matches in the knockout stage involving English clubs playing at home, whereby domestic radio stations may bid for non-exclusive rights to all coverage, including online broadcast. BBC Radio 5 Live were Official Broadcasters of the 2006 World Cup along with talkSPORT. Both stations broadcast live Premier League commentaries from August 2007, with the 7 rights packages being shared 6 to 1 in favour of 5 Live.

Regular programmes
Regular shows as of January 2013:


 * Morning Reports, presented by the station's overnight newsreader
 * Wake Up to Money, presented by Andrew Verity (Mon-Thur, Robert Miller on Fri) and Mickey Clark
 * 5 live Breakfast, with Nicky Campbell and Rachel Burden.
 * Victoria Derbyshire
 * Shelagh Fogarty
 * Richard Bacon
 * Kermode and Mayo's Film Review, with Simon Mayo and Mark Kermode
 * 5 live Drive, with Peter Allen and Louise Minchin (Mon & Tue) or Anna Foster (Wed-Fri) (Declan Curry is a regular stand-in presenter)
 * 5 live Sport, presented by Mark Pougatch (Tuesday, Wednesday and Saturday), Mark Chapman (Monday, plus some Saturdays and Sundays), Eleanor Oldroyd (Thursday), Colin Murray (Friday), Ian Payne (Sunday).
 * 5 live Formula 1, with James Allen and Jennie Gow
 * Tony Livesey
 * Up All Night with Rhod Sharp (Tue-Thur) or Dotun Adebayo (Fri-Mon), which also hosts on Mondays an edition of The Naked Scientists, a pacey take on the week's science news.
 * The Stephen Nolan show
 * The Danny Baker Show''
 * Fighting Talk with Colin Murray
 * 606 with Mark Chapman and Robbie Savage (Saturday), or Alan Green (Sunday)
 * Weekend Breakfast with Phil Williams and Eleanor Oldroyd (Sat) or Caroline Barker (Sun)
 * Prime Minister's Questions (Wed), with Shelagh Fogarty.
 * Sportsweek, with Garry Richardson
 * Pienaar's Politics, with John Pienaar
 * On the Money, with Declan Curry
 * 5 live Investigates, with Adrian Goldberg
 * Double Take, with Anita Anand and Sam Walker

5 Live Sports Extra
As 5 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:


 * Cricket World Cup, ICC Champions Trophy, and Twenty20 World Cup
 * England cricket tests and One Day Internationals
 * Friends Provident Trophy semi-finals and final and Twenty20 Cup
 * 'Grand Slam' Tennis tournaments
 * Action from any other competition broadcast on Five Live

Sports Extra typically emphasizes 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.

Presenters
Current newsreaders include Rachael Hodges, Faye Ruscoe, Tom Sandars, Richard Foster, Cory Allen, Darren McKenzie, Kate Williams, Theopi Skarlatos, Matt Hewitt and Suzanne Chislett.

Current sport readers include: George Riley, Will Perry, Mike Williams, Andy Barwell, Lee James, Jenny Culshaw and Martin Emmerson.

Current travel readers include Michelle Dignan and Orna Merchant.

Former presenters
Former presenters include Susan Bookbinder, Daire Brehan, Jon Briggs, Jon Champion, Adrian Chiles, Edwina Currie, Fi Glover, Nick Hancock, Brian Hayes, Peter Heaton-Jones, Jane Hill, Des Lynam, David Mellor, Paddy O'Connell, Jonathan Pearce, Nick Robinson, Sybil Ruscoe, Bill Turnbull, Sian Williams, Eamonn Holmes, Mark Saggers and Wendy Robbins.