BBC Radio Five Live

There's also the relationship with Radio 4. On the one hand you have calls for PM to be axed, on the grounds that it is 'repeated' on Five Live, then you have a half hour news bulletin added to the schedule at 5.30 in the morning. The line seems to be that serious news is Radio 4 and fun news is Five Live.

Then you have the comical weekend evening phone-ins from Birmingham. While I'm not calling for the return of Edwina Currie, all of her replacements (and their multiplicity of stand-ins), have been shipped in from elsewhere in the country. I'm sure Stephen Nolan would much rather present from Belfast!

Presumably we'll have more of this when the move to Manchester comes, but for someone who lives in East Anglia, isn't that just swapping one metropolitan bias for another?

JC

I'm pretty sure that, on occasion, Nolan has presented from Belfast. I must say I rather enjoyed Edwina Currie when she presented the phone-in - she was actually a pretty skilled presenter in my opinion.

As someone who lives in East Anglia (albeit as south as you can get), I don't see a problem with the regional issue. Five Live could be presented from London 100% of the time, but they strive to make it clear when it is from Birmingham or Manchester.

It's not that I mind where it's presented from. Just the fuss that is made about being "From Birmingham" and then constantly shipping presenters in. There must be plenty of capable presenters in the West Midlands, and yes, Currie was OK.

Incidentally, the only time something exciting happened in Birmingham – the evacuation of the city centre – the studio had to be evacuated.

Yes. Being a big fan of Five Live, I heard this happen live on air.They handed back to london, but kept going back to B'ham for updates from reporters on the ground.

I seem to remember starting a thread here in June about Five Live, and Phil's show on Saturday-Sunday at 9pm-1am live from birmingham. Stephen Nolen has replaced him, and after listening to this show on many occasions, its awful. He tries to take over the whole show, and in effect, puts words into peoples mouths.

They say its Live News and Live Sport. Live Sport it is, but Live News, not so much.

I remember it being dubbed "BBC News 24's sister station on radio"

It was, until they went more sporty a few years ago, however I do love five live just as much

There has been a rolling news service in London for over a decade and it has never really done that well no matter what they do with the format or whether they put it on FM or AM.



Was it clear that they had won at 9am? Even so what possibly could 5 Live have done except have rolling speculation about what might happen in the future - it's bad enough having that on TV.

It certainly wasn't a big enough story to abandon the regular features based magazine programme: it was an on-going from the day before. They certainly couldn't have run a phone-in about it this morning (maybe Friday morning when everything is more concrete)

If it was 10 years ago and Sein Fein won an election and the result broke that morning (rather than trickling through over the course of 2 days like in Palestein) then it would get substantially more coverage... but then it's happening in this country. Although the sad truth is that even at the height of the 'troubles' most non-Northern Irelanders couldn't care what happened to Northern Ireland just in the same way that they couldn't about Israel-Palestein

Of course in today's circumstance there was quite a link between the Galloway story and the Palestinian election story

I've just checked the scripts, and the Hamas story was also the lead on Five Live's bulletins. Just because the phone in wasn't about the Palestinians, doesn't mean Five Live weren't treating it as a big story. It would be a very difficult subject to have a meaningful phone in on.

There are capable presenters in the West Midlands & they all work for BBC WM

How come certain network BBC radio shows come from certain regional studios?

Why do the likes of Ed Stewart who, I gather, lives in the South, do their show from Birmingham, when he could easily get to Southampton as well?




5 Live seemed to be, on DAB, the only one broadcasting live bits from Brum. The locals(WM certainly!) had to evacuate obviously & swopped all outputs to back up tapes until they could get to their own back up studios, but WM could only broadcast on FM until 9am Sunday, due to technical problems. WM went to BBC Hereford & Worcester(how come they didn't go to Wolverhampton?) & did a joint show until 2am, then came from Coventry only between 6am & 9am, while DAB let the back up tape run out then dead air until 5 Live takeover, but came back at 6am with a simulcast of BBC Radio Leicester until 9am.

There are regional quotas - BBC networks have to produce a certain amount of programmes outside London. Radio 2 for example does a lot from Birmingham and Radio 4 does a lot from Manchester

They aren't local radio studios though, they are network production studios at the network production centres of Birmingham and Manchester. A local station such as Radio Solent isn't big enough or equiped to house network programmes as well as its own output. The only time I can remember it happening is when Chris Moyles has been coming from elsewhere (Leeds for example)