BBC Radio 5 Live is a British national radio station owned and operated by the BBC that broadcasts mainly news, sport, discussion, interviews and phone-ins. It is the principal BBC 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 Medium wave (MW) is the part of the medium frequency (MF) radio band used mainly for AM radio broadcasting. The spectrum provides about 120 channels with more limited sound quality than FM stations on the FM broadcast band. During the dayt ...

693 and 909 kHz and digitally via digital radio,

television Television, sometimes shortened to TV, is a telecommunication Media (communication), medium for transmitting moving images and sound. The term can refer to a television set, or the medium of Transmission (telecommunications), television tra ...

and on the

BBC Sounds BBC Sounds is a walled garden streaming media and audio download service from the BBC that includes live radio broadcasts, audio on demand, and podcasts. The service is available on a wide range of devices, including mobile phones and tablets, ...

service. Due to rights restrictions, coverage of some events, particularly live sport, is not available online or is restricted to UK addresses. The station broadcasts from

MediaCityUK MediaCityUK is a mixed-use property development on the banks of the Manchester Ship Canal in Salford, Greater Manchester, England. The project was developed by Peel Media; its principal tenants are media organisations and the Quayside MediaCi ...

Salford Salford () is a city and the largest settlement in the City of Salford metropolitan borough in Greater Manchester, England. In 2011, Salford had a population of 103,886. It is also the second and only other city in the metropolitan county afte ...

Greater Manchester Greater Manchester is a metropolitan county and combined authority area in North West England, with a population of 2.8 million; comprising ten metropolitan boroughs: Manchester, Salford, Bolton, Bury, Oldham, Rochdale, Stockport, Tamesid ...

and is a department of the BBC North division. According to

RAJAR Radio Joint Audience Research Limited (RAJAR) was established in 1992 to operate a single audience measurement system for the radio industry in the United Kingdom. RAJAR is jointly owned by the BBC and RadioCentre. RAJAR's predecessor was call ...

, the station broadcasts to a weekly audience of 4.8 million with a listening share of 2.7% as of September 2022.

History

The success of Radio 4 News FM during the first

Gulf War The Gulf War was a 1990–1991 armed campaign waged by a Coalition of the Gulf War, 35-country military coalition in response to the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait. Spearheaded by the United States, the coalition's efforts against Ba'athist Iraq, ...

(1991) led the BBC to propose the launch of a rolling-news service. Initially the plan was to broadcast a rolling news service on

BBC Radio 4 BBC Radio 4 is a British national radio station owned and operated by the BBC that replaced the BBC Home Service in 1967. It broadcasts a wide variety of Talk radio, spoken-word programmes, including news, drama, comedy, science and history fro ...

's long wave frequency; but this met with considerable opposition, both internally and externally, so the BBC decided to close BBC Radio 5 and replace the old service's educational and children's programmes with a new news service, whilst retaining the sports programmes. BBC Radio 5 Live began its 24-hour service at 5am on Monday 28 March 1994. The first voice on air, Jane Garvey, later went on to co-present the breakfast and drive-time shows with Peter Allen. ''

The Times ''The Times'' is a British daily national newspaper based in London. It began in 1785 under the title ''The Daily Universal Register'', adopting its current name on 1 January 1788. ''The Times'' and its sister paper '' The Sunday Times'' ...

'' described the launch as "slipp ngsmoothly and confidently into a routine of informative banter" and ''

The Scotsman ''The Scotsman'' is a Scottish compact newspaper and daily news website headquartered in Edinburgh. First established as a radical political paper in 1817, it began daily publication in 1855 and remained a broadsheet until August 2004. Its pa ...

'' as "professionalism at its slickest". The news of the first day was dominated by the fatal stabbing at Hall Garth School near

Middlesbrough Middlesbrough ( ) is a town on the southern bank of the River Tees in North Yorkshire, England. It is near the North York Moors national park. It is the namesake and main town of its local borough council area. Until the early 1800s, the a ...

, the first of many major incidents which the network covered live as they unfolded. 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 BBC News is an operational business division of the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) responsible for the gathering and broadcasting of news and current affairs in the UK and around the world. The department is the world's largest broad ...

services later in the decade. The first audiences were some 4 million, with a record audience of 6.25 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 ''

'' newspaper and professor of Journalism at the

University of Kent , motto_lang = , mottoeng = Literal translation: 'Whom to serve is to reign'(Book of Common Prayer translation: 'whose service is perfect freedom')Graham Martin, ''From Vision to Reality: the Making of the University of Kent at Canterbury'' ...

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 and the long-wave frequency of

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 An earthquake and a tsunami, known as the Boxing Day Tsunami and, by the scientific community, the Sumatra–Andaman earthquake, occurred at 07:58:53 local time (UTC+7) on 26 December 2004, with an epicentre off the west coast of northern Suma ...

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 5 Live 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

. In 2017/18, it was noted the station not only remained as having the fourth highest cost-per-user of all the BBC radio output, but whose costs also increased – rising from 2.3p per hour the previous year to 2.5p per hour, therefore equal to

1Xtra BBC Radio 1Xtra is a British digital radio in the United Kingdom, digital radio station owned and operated by the BBC. It broadcasts black music and urban contemporary, urban music, including Hip hop music, hip hop and Contemporary R&B, R&B an ...

. The audience Appreciation Index figure did not increase, remaining at 79.9; and the average length of time spent on the channel fell from 06:41 to 06:34 – the fourth lowest fall of all of the BBC's radio stations.

Broadcast

BBC Radio 5 Live broadcasts in AM on the

frequencies 693 and 909 kHz nationally, with the frequency 990 kHz used in

Cardigan Bay Cardigan Bay ( cy, Bae Ceredigion) is a large inlet of the Irish Sea, indenting the west coast of Wales between Bardsey Island, Gwynedd in the north, and Strumble Head, Pembrokeshire at its southern end. It is the largest bay in Wales. Geo ...

in west Wales; these frequencies had been utilised by the old BBC Radio 5, which in turn had taken over the frequencies from

BBC Radio 2 BBC Radio 2 is a British national radio station owned and operated by the BBC. It is the most popular station in the United Kingdom with over 15 million weekly listeners. Since launching in 1967, the station broadcasts a wide range of content ...

. Uniquely to the

BBC Radio BBC Radio is an operational business division and service of the British Broadcasting Corporation (which has operated in the United Kingdom under the terms of a royal charter since 1927). The service provides national radio stations covering ...

network, it is the only station that is neither purely digital (such as

, Radio 4 Extra and 6 Music) nor broadcast in analogue on FM. It is however broadcast in stereo on FM and DAB on BBC Local Radio frequencies overnight, usually from 1am until BBC Local Radio commences morning broadcasts, usually from 5am. BBC Radio 5 Live is also broadcast on BBC Radio Cymru in stereo from midnight until 5:30am, on

BBC Radio Scotland BBC Radio Scotland is a Scotland, Scottish radio station, radio network owned and operated by BBC Scotland, a division of the BBC. It broadcasts a wide variety of programmes. It replaced the Scottish BBC Radio 4 opt-out service of the same na ...

from 1am until 6am and on BBC Radio Ulster from midnight until 6:30am. In addition to the AM output, the station also broadcasts digitally in mono on DAB Digital Radio, and on television through

satellite A satellite or artificial satellite is an object intentionally placed into orbit in outer space. Except for passive satellites, most satellites have an electricity generation system for equipment on board, such as solar panels or radioiso ...

services such as Sky, cable services such as

Virgin Media Virgin Media is a British telecommunications company which provides telephone, television and internet services in the United Kingdom. Its headquarters are at Green Park in Reading, England. It is owned by Virgin Media O2, a 50:50 joint ven ...

, DTT services such as Freeview,

Freesat Freesat is a British free-to-air satellite television service, first formed as a joint venture between the BBC and ITV plc and now owned by Digital UK. The service was formed as a memorandum in 2007 and has been marketed since 6 May 2008. F ...

and through

IPTV Internet Protocol television (IPTV) is the delivery of television content over Internet Protocol (IP) networks. This is in contrast to delivery through traditional terrestrial, satellite, and cable television formats. Unlike downloaded med ...

. The station also broadcasts programmes live through

, which allows replaying programmes up to a month after the original broadcast. The service is also available on the Radioplayer internet site partially run by the BBC. For many years, the station operated from four floors within the News Centre at BBC Television Centre, because of the close connections between the station and

, and the co-location of

BBC Sport BBC Sport is the sports division of the BBC, providing national sports coverage for BBC television, radio and online. The BBC holds the television and radio UK broadcasting rights to several sports, broadcasting the sport live or alongside ...

. 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

. The move itself began in September 2011 and took two months. The new studios occupy a single floor in Quay House, with two studios large enough for several guests and a separate studio for large groups. The station continues to have a studio presence in London, with Studio 51A at BBC Broadcasting House in London used for programmes and interviews made in London for the station such as "Kermode and Mayo's Film Review".

List of programmes broadcast on 5 Live

* '' Dotun Adebayo'' (Monday – Friday) * '' Wake Up to Money'' with Sean Farrington,

Mickey Clark Mickey Clark is an English financial journalist, currently working for the London ''Evening Standard'' and BBC Radio 5 Live. Clark re-joined the ''Evening Standard'' in 1999, writing for ''The Times'' and the ''Daily Express'' in the interim per ...

e and

Louise Cooper Louise Cooper (29 May 1952 – 21 October 2009) was a British fantasy writer who lived in Cornwall with her husband, Cas Sandall. Cooper was born in Barnet, Hertfordshire. She began writing stories when she was at school to entertain her ...

* ''5 Live Breakfast'' with Rick Edwards and Rachel Burden * '' Nicky Campbell'' (Monday – Friday) * ''

Naga Munchetty Subha Nagalakshmi Munchetty-Chendriah (born 25 February 1975), also known as Naga Munchetty, is a British television presenter, newsreader and journalist. She regularly presents ''BBC Breakfast''. She is also a former presenter of BBC World Ne ...

'' (Monday – Wednesday) & '' Adrian Chiles'' (Thursday – Friday) * '' Nihal Arthanayake'' (Monday – Thursday) * ''Robbie Savage’s Premier League Breakfast'' with Robbie Savage (Friday) * '' Elis James and John Robins'' (Friday) * ''5 Live Drive'' with Tony Livesey and

Clare McDonnell Clare McDonnell (born 1967) is a Sony Radio Academy Awards winning British radio broadcaster and presenter. Career McDonnell began as a reporter in local radio in England, and from there moved on to be a radio presenter. For several ...

* '' 5 Live Sport'' with Mark Chapman (Monday, Wednesday and Saturday), Kelly Cates (Tuesday), Steve Crossman (Thursday and Sunday) and

Darren Fletcher Darren Barr Fletcher (born 1 February 1984) is a Scottish football coach and former professional player who is currently the technical director of Manchester United, where he spent the majority of his playing career. He mostly played as a cen ...

(Friday) * '' Colin Murray'' (Monday – Thursday) & '' Stephan Nolan'' (Friday – Sunday) * ''5 live Boxing'' with Mike Costello and Steve Bunce (Saturday) * ''Weekend Breakfast'' with Chris Warburton and Eleanor Oldroyd * '' Patrick Kielty'' (Saturday) * ''

Tailenders In cricket, the batting order is the sequence in which batters play through their team's innings, there always being two batters taking part at any one time. All eleven players in a team are required to bat if the innings is completed (i.e., if ...

'' with

Greg James Gregory James Alan Milward (born 17 December 1985) is an English radio and television presenter, comedian and author. He is the host of BBC Radio 1's breakfast show, co-presenter on the cricket podcast ''Tailenders'' alongside Felix White and ...

, Jimmy Anderson and Felix White (Saturday) * '' Fighting Talk'' with Colin Murray (Saturday) * '' Sports Report'' with Mark Chapman (Saturday) * '' 606'' with Robbie Savage and Chris Sutton (Saturday – Sunday) * ''5 live in Short'' with Chris Warburton (Sunday mornings) * ''5 live Science'' with Chris Smith and the Naked Scientists team (Sunday) * '' Helen Skelton'' (Sunday) * ''The Squad'' with Nick Bright (Sunday)

Programming

News

BBC Radio 5 Live @ Quay House, MediaCityUK

BBC Radio 5 Live's remit includes broadcasting rolling news and transmitting news as it breaks. It offers news bulletins every half an hour, apart from during live sports commentaries. 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); the subsequent priority is to report on Radio 5 Live, then the BBC News Channel, and then 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. Due to

COVID-19 Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is a contagious disease caused by a virus, the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). The first known case was identified in Wuhan, China, in December 2019. The disease quickl ...

, the hourly news bulletins were shared with

from April 2020. Three minute bulletins are broadcast on the hour, with extended five minute bulletins at 06:00, 07:00, 08:00, 13:00 and 17:00 on weekdays, at 07:00 and 08:00 on Saturdays and at 06:00, 07:00, 08:00 and 09:00 on Sundays. Half-hour news headlines are mostly read by presenters and sports journalists, although newsreaders are used during weekday daytime programming between 10:30 and 15:30 and during 5 Live Sport evening and weekend programming.

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 The Premier League (legal name: The Football Association Premier League Limited) is the highest level of the men's English football league system. Contested by 20 clubs, it operates on a system of promotion and relegation with the English Foo ...

(simulcasted with

BBC World Service The BBC World Service is an international broadcasting, international broadcaster owned and operated by the BBC, with funding from the Government of the United Kingdom, British Government through the Foreign Secretary, Foreign Secretary's o ...

for international coverage) ** 15:00

Saturday Saturday is the day of the week between Friday and Sunday. No later than the 2nd century, the Romans named Saturday ("Saturn's Day") for the planet Saturn, which controlled the first hour of that day, according to Vettius Valens. The day's ...

matches ** 17:30 Saturday night matches ** High profile 14:00 and 16:30

Sunday Sunday is the day of the week between Saturday and Monday. In most Western countries, Sunday is a day of rest and a part of the weekend. It is often considered the first day of the week. For most observant adherents of Christianity, Sunday ...

matches ** 15:00 Boxing Day matches ** 20:00

Friday Friday is the day of the week between Thursday and Saturday. In countries that adopt the traditional "Sunday-first" convention, it is the sixth day of the week. In countries adopting the ISO-defined "Monday-first" convention, it is the fifth da ...

night matches ** Select 16:00

matches on the week 38 only ** 20:00 Wednesday and

Thursday Thursday is the day of the week between Wednesday and Friday. According to the ISO 8601 international standard, it is the fourth day of the week. In countries which adopt the "Sunday-first" convention, it is the fifth day of the week. Name ''Se ...

night midweek matches *Live

FA Community Shield The Football Association Community Shield (formerly the Charity Shield) is English football's annual match contested at Wembley Stadium between the champions of the previous Premier League season and the holders of the FA Cup. If the Premier L ...

(simulcasted with BBC World Service for international coverage) *Live

FA Cup The Football Association Challenge Cup, more commonly known as the FA Cup, is an annual knockout football competition in men's domestic English football. First played during the 1871–72 season, it is the oldest national football competit ...

(simulcasted with BBC World Service for international coverage) ** Select third to fifth round ties ** Select quarter-final ties ** FA Cup semi-finals (Sundays only) **

FA Cup final The FA Cup Final, commonly referred to in England as just the Cup Final, is the last match in the Football Association Challenge Cup. It has regularly been one of the most attended domestic football events in the world, with an official atten ...

*Live

EFL Cup The EFL Cup (referred to historically, and colloquially, as the League Cup), currently known as the Carabao Cup for sponsorship reasons, is an annual knockout competition and major trophy in men's domestic football in England. Organised by th ...

(simulcasted with BBC World Service for international coverage) ** Select second to fourth round ties ** Select quarter-final ties ** EFL Cup semi-finals ** EFL Cup final *Live

Scottish Premiership The Scottish Premiership, known as the cinch Premiership for sponsorship reasons, is the top division of the Scottish Professional Football League (SPFL), the league competition for men's professional football clubs in Scotland. The Scottis ...

** The Old Firm (simulcast with

) *

FIFA World Cup The FIFA World Cup, often simply called the World Cup, is an international association football competition contested by the senior List of men's national association football teams, men's national teams of the members of the ' (FIFA), the ...

*All

Home Nations Home Nations is a collective term with one of two meanings depending on context. Politically it means the nations of the constituent countries of the United Kingdom (England, Northern Ireland, Scotland, and Wales). In sport, if a sport is g ...

international football matches ** Friendly matches ** UEFA European Qualifiers **

UEFA Nations League The UEFA Nations League is a biennial international football competition contested by the senior men's national teams of the member associations of UEFA, the sport's European governing body. The first tournament began in September 2018. The ...

UEFA European Championship The UEFA European Football Championship, less formally the European Championship and informally the Euro, is the primary association football tournament organised by the Union of European Football Associations (UEFA). The competition is contes ...

FIFA Women's World Cup The FIFA Women's World Cup is an international association football competition contested by the senior women's national teams of the members of Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA), the sport's international governing bo ...

** UEFA Women's Euro *

UEFA Champions League