About the �鶹Լ�� Feed

Behind the scenes broadcasting the Conor McGregor v Khabib Nurmagomedov fight

2018-10-05T15:30:00+00:00

�鶹Լ�� Radio 5 live is broadcasting a mixed martial arts fight between Conor McGregor (pictured) and Khabib Nurmagomedov at 3am on 7 October

This is the third UFC MMA (Ultimate Fighting Championship Mixed Martial Arts) fight that 5 live has covered, but as far as I’m aware it’s the first time commentating has ever been attempted on live radio in the UK.

It means to a large extent we’re inventing the genre of UFC commentary on the radio as we go along.

There’s been live boxing on the radio since the �鶹Լ�� began, but UFC MMA is a different sport, the rounds are longer for example. It’s almost entirely descriptive for the commentator, to keep up with the action and give people as clear a mental picture as possible, whereas the expert analyst or former fighter will mention the details they’d notice and explain why what’s happening is happening.

There’ll be 14 fights and 5 live will only be broadcasting five of them. But we commentate, as though live, on fights early on to get into the rhythm. It’s a really good team, and hopefully we’ll nail it for Saturday night.

At the moment, Vegas is without doubt UFC’s town and Conor McGregor’s town. You just notice how busy the city is overall: the airport is right by the Strip where all the hotels are and over the course of the week you can watch this spot of tarmac, a ‘car park’ for all the private jets get busier and busier, hundreds of them arriving and being parked up. It’s a high rollers weekend, and just talking to people here it’s one of the biggest of the year.

The �鶹Լ�� MMA Show has been providing daily podcasts during fight week

We haven’t done anything live from any of the press conferences because of the time difference being eight hours behind UK time, although we did a live hit onto 5 live Sport earlier on Thursday from my phone with an app.

It was working on the Wifi, and while I’m not sure I’d do an hour-long programme on it, for a five-minute ‘this is what’s happening’ it’s great. Even during just the past few years, this sort of thing has become a lot more reliable and is becoming more prevalent in broadcasting.

I’ve got a bag of gadgets that means we can plug microphones into phones or five sets of headphones into one phone, and we've done a live programme standing out on the Las Vegas Strip, just in the street, via a phone back to the UK.

There’s a different setup for fight night, with a sound engineer and mixing desks, like a traditional studio. It’s a complicated event, as different feeds are ordered from the host broadcaster, to mix the crowd noise up and down, or inside the octagon so the sound of the punches slapping into the fighters or their footsteps on the canvas, or the MC who gets in the ring, or the two corners between rounds so audiences can hear what they’re saying.

It's one of the most technically challenging mixes for a sound engineer that we do, in terms of single day, two-hour programmes.

The mixing will be done on location, then sent to Salford studio engineers, and from Salford it’s broadcast to the world.

Social media will be incorporated into the coverage, working with �鶹Լ�� Sport online so our coverage feeds into their live text, joining up so people through their tweets and texts can be part of the show.

We’re a small team, but have produced a podcast every day, interviews, and an hour-long live show, as well as serving other outlets like the World Service or �鶹Լ�� television.

The main events of the week are happening overnight, so the way coverage is being planned is that all the material is there for you first thing in the morning, so you can wake up in the UK and see what you missed overnight, all the craziness, the press conference and weigh-in, the insults and so on. Ultimately though, who knows what’s going to happen!

Listen to all the action on �鶹Լ�� Radio 5 live from 3am on Sunday 7 October, or listen to a replay of the coverage here.

Tearing up the running order: what it's like as a Radio 5 live producer

2018-09-25T08:00:00+00:00

I get in around 8am, an hour before the rest of the Drive team. We generally have a blank canvass with nothing in the programme apart from the odd pre-planned piece, so we’ve got nearly three hours of radio to fill each day.

After looking at the stories doing the rounds in the morning and online, there’s a meeting at 8.30am with the other editors and senior producers of 5 live programmes and we discuss what’s on the news agenda and what the other programmes are doing.

The rest of the team gets in at 9am, and we meet to talk about their ideas for the programme, and what guests to speak to. A reporter or presenter might go out on location if there’s big, breaking news.

Then it’s a matter of bashing the phones and working on stories. If it’s a company or organisation we tend to approach a press office for people to interview, but with social media these days people who may not have been so easy to get hold of in the past can be contacted a lot more easily and directly.

Our lead story is put at the top of each hour, and if it’s big enough we might do it on the half-pasts as well. That’s about the only structure, other than at 6.30pm where every day we spend the last half hour on one story with three or four guests. Presenters Tony Livesey and Sarah Brett will ask questions, but it’s all very relaxed and conversational.

With an event like the death of Aretha Franklin, it’s a matter of tearing up the running order and starting again. When that happens, everything just sort of works - everyone very quickly is made aware of what their role is in the process as pretty much the whole team will be working on it, and it works like a well-oiled machine.

It happens quite a lot, having to react to breaking news and making decisions on what you’re going to lose to accommodate what comes in - I don’t drink coffee, but get through lots of tea! Though I try to stick to decaf tea now.

We’re on 4-7pm, but the show is still very much a work in progress as you’ll have producers during the first hour working on pieces for later on.

At 7pm we’re off air and chat about what went well what went not so well, then it’s home time.

When Prince died, it was late on in the programme and we stayed on air later. It was a rolling news operation, providing updates when they came in. If there’s a big story we’ll stay on, for example with some of the awful terror attacks.

It’s not just sound and radio, as we’ve massively increased our digital coverage, so that means sourcing and uploading pictures and video as well.

On Drive, the stories and issues reflect a broadening of the audience to include younger listeners, young families and students, and with more diverse voices on air, more women, younger people, and from different backgrounds.

5 live is one of the biggest newsrooms outside London, so it’s important to also report from parts of the UK that don’t always get the coverage that they should, and in Salford it’s easier for us to get out to different parts of the country.

Ultimately, it’s not all about serious news. We like to put a smile on our audience’s faces every day and like them to get involved, we get great responses through texts and tweets, so it’s a nice mix.

Drive is broadcast on �鶹Լ�� Radio 5 live 4-7pm, Monday-Friday.

A spectacular summer of programmes on �鶹Լ�� 5 live

2016-06-09T08:30:14+00:00

It’s been a hectic week at 5 live HQ in Salford.

From referendum debates in Ipswich and Dover, to reporting from Louisville for Muhammad Ali’s funeral, to plans for a programme from St Paul’s Cathedral to mark the Queen’s 90th birthday tomorrow, and then of course we have the start of our very busy sporting summer.

Thierry Henry is our special guest tomorrow night for the opening match of Euro 2016 as the hosts France get things started against Romania.

Meanwhile, down in the South of France, Alan Green will be putting in final preparation for the commentary of England v Russia on Saturday night.

Before that, 5 live and �鶹Լ�� Radio Wales will have joined together to broadcast the Saturday afternoon Wales v Slovakia game in Bordeaux.

After two years of planning, we just hope the home nations can perform well and inspire our listeners, unlike the World Cup when England were out before the tournament had really got going.

So our guarantee in June is to deliver comprehensive coverage of both Euro 2016, and that other major European issue, the EU referendum.

How far will the home nations progress, and what will the fallout from the referendum result be? Our listeners will get the best analysis from our football and political experts.

We’ll be live in Rio for both the Olympics and Paralympics – the only British station delivering both events. We will have live coverage of the Olympics from lunchtime each day through until the early hours of the morning. At 6am, 7am and 8am, you can wake up to a half an hour digest of the overnight sport you may have missed.

We’ll also be in Iraq this summer to get local reaction to publication of the Chilcot report.

Tony Livesey and Eleanor Oldroyd team up with tennis correspondent Russell Fuller to guide us all through Wimbledon, Jennie Gow leads our F1 team at the big races including the British Grand Prix, and Iain Carter and his golf producer Jamie Peacock not only have an Open championship to prepare for, but the US Open too.

Anna Foster will host a fascinating new programme all about families and fertility. Judge Rob Rinder is back with his show lifting the lid on the legal world, and �鶹Լ�� Arts Editor Will Gompertz is also back with another series on the UK arts stories of the summer.

After the busy summer, we will then be introducing some new presenters to our 5 live team as well as reuniting one of the great radio partnerships of a generation.

Peter Allen and Jane Garvey will present a new Sunday show reflecting on the stories of the week, which they are really looking forward to.

Emma Barnett gets a regular daytime slot presenting 5 live Daily every Wednesday to Friday, with Adrian Chiles continuing on Monday and Tuesdays.

I’m also delighted to welcome Nihal Arthanayake to 5 live who joins us from the Asian Network. Nihal will partner Sarah Brett on our Afternoon Edition show.

I really believe that in Emma and Nihal we have been developing two of the real star performers in UK radio and I know they will fit in well to our team.

Here are just ten of the highlights of a huge summer.

1. Rio Olympics 17 days of exclusive coverage of the key moments on �鶹Լ�� Radio 5 live and 5 live sports extra. The station brings Olympic medallist Jonathan Edwards to the presentation team and the top line-up of experts include Olympians Victoria Pendleton, Darren Campbell, Karen Pickering and Mark Hunter.

2. Paralympics More than 80 hours of live and exclusive coverage from the 2016 Paralympics with a commentary team led by Baroness Tanni Grey-Thompson. ParalympicsGB’s medal hopes are high after a stunning Games at London 2012 and 5 live will bring you all the glory of every golden moment.

3. Euro 2016 5 live brings listeners 23 days of live European Championship football. German goalkeeping legend Jens Lehmann joins the 5 live team, with Chris Waddle, Robbie Savage, Jermaine Jenas, Neil Lennon, John Hartson and Gerry Taggart also in France for the station.

4. EU Referendum Insight and explanation of the campaign from every corner of the UK to help listeners make up their minds. Live results night programme and next day reaction with what it means for you.

5. 5 Life From the struggle to conceive a child to the pains of pregnancy and the miracle of birth, 5 live’s Anna Foster looks at life and loss, families and fertility, reflecting on her own experiences as a mum of two young children in this fascinating new series.

6. Wake Up To Money - Sports Edition Business presenterAdam Parsons launches a new edition of 5 live’s popular finance programme, focusing on the business of sport.

7. Chilcot report - Return to Iraq As the inquiry into the UK’s involvement in Iraq reports its findings after seven years, 5 live returns to the country to examine the long term impact of the conflict and catch up with some of the people we met shortly after the war.

8. Wimbledon All the action from SW19, led by 5 live Sport’s award-winning sports presenter Eleanor Oldroyd and Drive presenter Tony Livesey. Plus phone-in show 6 Love 6 is back giving listeners the chance to put their points to John McEnroe. Seriously.

9. Summer of golf Live coverage of 4 huge tournaments: US Open, Open Championship, US PGA and the Ryder Cup. Presenter John Inverdale and �鶹Լ�� golf correspondent Iain Carter.

10. Premier League 16/17 The new Premier League season on 5 live will bring more live commentaries than any other radio station – up next season from 128 to 144 matches. The home of football will bring the rivalry of new manager Jose Mourinho at Manchester United facing Pep Guardiola at Manchester City, plus all the anticipation around last season’s champions - Leicester City.

Jonathan Wall is Controller, �鶹Լ�� 5 live.

Read a press release about summer on 5live on the Media Centre website.

�鶹Լ�� 5 Live Sports Extra proposals

2015-04-30T12:16:33+00:00

This week �鶹Լ�� Radio 5 live’s sister station - 5 live Sports Extra have put a proposal to the �鶹Լ�� Trust to make some changes. Controller Jonathan Wall explains further.

We’ve been in discussions with the �鶹Լ�� Trust as part of the service licence review they are currently conducting into �鶹Լ�� Radio 4, �鶹Լ�� Radio 4 Extra, �鶹Լ�� Radio 5 live and �鶹Լ�� 5 live Sports Extra.

The main aim of the proposed changes is to give increased airtime and exposure to a wide range of sports that don’t currently receive significant coverage on UK radio.

We want 5 live Sports Extra to be an even bigger driving force for good for sport in this country. By introducing a limited amount of new magazine programming to our remit of covering live sport, Sports Extra could become a broader multi-sport channel.

This plan would also help meet some of the new ways of listening to sport – on phones, on tablets and in a personalised way.

We propose to commission a maximum of 10 hours per week of new magazine programmes.

What will these be? Well, we are committing to a new weekly Olympic and Paralympics show in the build up to Rio next year. There would also be a new weekly cycling show focusing both on elite sport and participation.

Our proposal also includes, for the first time ever on British radio, a new weekly show all about netball, one of the UK’s fastest growing sports. We would also make a weekly magazine show during the women’s football season.

Listeners can then find these programmes when they want either online via the �鶹Լ�� Sport website or by tuning in to Sports Extra on digital radio.

Sports that are already well served by UK radio, such as Premier League football, international cricket and international rugby union won’t be included in this list of new shows. This proposal is driven by a mission to make a big step change in how we cover sports that don’t always get the attention they deserve.

We also propose to schedule a maximum of 10 hours per week to repeat the very best of our sports journalism. For example, the high quality specials made by 5 live sport and �鶹Լ�� World Service sport such as Pregnancy and Sport, Tony McCoy’s Top Ten Horses, and Jimmy Anderson – The Wicket Man.

Crucially, none of this will be at the expense of the current range and depth we now deliver on our main channel �鶹Լ�� Radio 5 live.

In 2014, we covered 51 sports on 5 live. That’s the most in our history. I really believe this proposal to make limited, tailor-made content for Sports Extra would complement the programming on 5 live.

Over the last two years, we have taken a number of steps to reach audiences in new ways. This has included an innovation on the �鶹Լ�� Sport App where you can now listen to our live commentaries on your mobile whilst checking out the latest scores. We’ve also launched a 'snackable' service which allows people to listen to short bursts of our best output. In Short, as it’s known, now gets a million hits a month.

We think this proposal will not only deliver the most distinctive programming in the 90 year history of �鶹Լ�� radio sport, but will also encourage our audiences to listen to us in new ways.

We also think it increases support for a broader range of sports at a time when participation is declining and physical inactivity is increasing. We want the wonderful, much-respected �鶹Լ�� radio sport team to deliver such range that it feels that our audiences can access world-leading coverage of all the sports that matter to them. In the new internet-first age, it is important that the �鶹Լ�� feels like a place that belongs to everyone, and is where everyone belongs, no matter their interest.

We will continue to discuss this issue with the �鶹Լ�� Trust over the next few months, and subject to approval, we hope to be in a position to start making changes to the 5 live sports schedule from January 2016.

Jonathan Wall, controller of �鶹Լ�� Radio 5 live and 5 live Sports Extra.

How �鶹Լ�� 5 live are covering the 2015 election campaign

2015-04-08T11:47:15+00:00

Great Grimsby, on the eastern edge of North Lincolnshire, was the perfect place to launch �鶹Լ�� Radio 5 live's ambitious election coverage. Geographically, and more importantly culturally, it’s a long way from Westminster. Voters in towns like Grimsby could prove so pivotal to the outcome of the General Election.

On Tuesday morning, Nicky Campbell presented our Breakfast programme from Grimsby's fish market. The night before, he marked the occasion by ordering a giant haddock supper – complete with a controversial side order of baked beans. While mingling with the market traders, Nicky met, perhaps unsurprisingly, people with robust views on the European Union and its fishing quotas. He also learnt about the off-shore wind industry and it's investment in the area.

Today we've been in Dewsbury in West Yorkshire with Peter Allen talking to local people from the town’s diverse communities. During the coming weeks, as we countdown to polling day, we'll also be broadcasting live from a caravan park in Anglesey, a mosque in north London, a tower block in Glasgow and from a speed boat in Argyll (providing Nicky Campbell's seas legs are up to it).

We've carefully planned a series of outside broadcasts, picking what we believe are 20 key seats –all with different issues and stories to unfold. It’s a mammoth task for our small team of planners, who are directing everything from our base besides the Manchester Ship Canal in Salford. This is 5 live's biggest ever project outside a World Cup or an Olympics.

And that brings me to sport. There may be an unpredictable election on, demanding our resources and commanding our attention, but sport doesn’t stop. We’ve got to balance our brilliant plans to cover the election with a packed sporting schedule. Just this week, we have live coverage of the Masters golf, the Grand National, the Chinese Grand Prix and the Manchester derby.

It's a huge challenge for our staff but it is times like this when 5 live thrives. Everyone is mucking in. Our new golf producer is overseeing his first Masters while our previous golf producer is part of the team coordinating our election plans. Listen out for any references to politicians getting stuck in the bunker.

The next few days will bring out the best in 5 live. We’ll be delivering compelling radio, mixing the best political commentary from John Pienaar with Iain Carter commentating on Rory McIlroy’s attempt to complete a golfing grand slam. Meanwhile, Stephen Nolan will be taking a pizza and a politician to a listener’s house in Southampton and Mark Pougatch will be interviewing AP McCoy in front of a Liverpool audience on the eve of the Grand National. Now that’s variety.

We are enjoying a good run on 5 live seeing growth in listening on digital rather than medium wave which is crucial to protect 5 live for years to come. We had 300,000 live listening requests online to our Premier League commentaries on Easter Saturday. And our short clip service, 5 live In Short, is now getting over a million hits a month. We’ve just broadcast a stunning documentary, Date Me I’m Disabled, about disability and relationships made by the �鶹Լ��’s disability correspondent Nikki Fox as well as specials on gaming and loneliness. Fighting Talk is live in Sheffield next month to coincide with the snooker world championship and the end of the football season.

And still to come, in a few weeks' time, what promises to be one of the most stunning pieces of radio this year. We were given unprecedented access to a heart transplant operation, interviewing the surgeons throughout and the family involved. For now though, we have 20 outside broadcasts across the UK to deliver before the Election, as well as a feast of live sport.

Jonathan Wall is Controller, �鶹Լ�� Radio 5 live

Tunics for Goalposts: Football on the front line in WW1

2014-12-11T16:03:00+00:00

After I retired as football correspondent and commentator at the World Cup in Brazil, I was invited to make occasional contributions to some special programmes on 5 live. Little did I know how ‘special’ the first one would be.

I have never taken part in anything before like Tunics For Goalposts – never felt so emotionally involved in a project – never learned so much from one hour.

Like most people, I have been made aware of the horror of the First World War. There probably isn’t a single family in the UK without some connection to the horrendous events between 1914 and 1918.

My knowledge though was sketchy and superficial. I had never visited any of the frontline battlefields in Belgium and France, something I would now urge everyone to try and do.

When you do, as I discovered, it is of course impossible to fully comprehend what it must have been like to experience such personal carnage and trauma – however walking ankle deep in autumnal mud on a raw November morning shrouded in mist across the ploughed battlefields on the Somme does offer an insight into how desperate it must have been for the troops, huddled together in rat-infested trenches, deprived of sleep, numb with cold and terrified that every day could be your last.

Everywhere you walk in those farmlands and forests, you are mindful of the fact that more often than not your footsteps are being made over hallowed soil, a massed burial ground underneath filled with so many bodies never recovered from the bloody conflict after vanishing beneath a quagmire of craters.

Among those entombed having lost their lives so young were footballers, who would never return to their clubs. Players from all levels of the game united in their supreme sacrifice.

Originally our intention on 5 live was to make a programme about the infamous Christmas truce matches in 1914, to discover and debate whether they were fact or fiction. This will be an important part of the programme, however the more we researched the subject it became clear that we should take on a wider brief and pay tribute to the footballers who gave their lives for their country.

When war broke out in August 1914, football was initially pilloried in many quarters as the league programme continued and the game came under great pressure. Attitudes soon changed. Hearts in Scotland led the way as football answered the call, and uniquely many of the players who decided to enlist for service did so by signing up for the 17^th Middlesex regiment which was to become known as the footballers battalion.

I was accompanied on my visit to France by Andrew Riddoch, author of When the Whistle Blows, the definitive story of the footballers battalion. In the book and in the programme, Andrew documents stories of remarkable gallantry by footballers on the frontline and records how whenever the opportunity presented itself they still managed to put their tunics down for goalposts and play games.

Andrew highlights the story of one of the most popular players who lost his life, the Grimsby Town captain Sidney Wheelhouse. 5 live made it possible for two of his descendants to travel with us in France to visit his grave for the first time. Sid’s great granddaughter Diane and husband Dean, a Falklands veteran have ensured that his name is never forgotten in Grimsby and after laying a wreath and leaving a Grimsby Town scarf by his gravestone now feel an even closer bond with him after what was an overwhelmingly emotional experience for them both.

Sidney was one of the unlucky ones who didn’t return. The Great War was such a lottery. My mother was born five years after the war ended and told me that her father jack had signed up for service after lying about his age. At the tender age of 17. A notebook in the breast pocket of his uniform deflected a sniper’s bullet and saved his life…and mine!

Mike Ingham is a presenter on �鶹Լ�� Radio 5 live.

Tunics for Goalposts will be broadcast on �鶹Լ�� Radio 5 live on Thursday 11 December at 8pm.
Find out more about footballers in WW1 on the �鶹Լ�� iWonder website.
Experience �鶹Լ�� iWonder’s interactive drama Footballers United.

5 live doesn't look like Radio Bloke from here

2014-07-03T08:26:54+00:00

I'm writing this in Radio 5 Live’s basement office at Wimbledon, between broadcasting stints at breakfast and teatime. Clare Balding is here, as are commentators Gigi Salmon and Alison Mitchell, and reporters Dot Davies and Karthi Gnanasegaram. We’ve enjoyed the company during the fortnight of champions Marion Bartoli, Martina Navratilova and Jana Novotna.

It doesn’t look like Radio Bloke from where I’m sitting.

That name has been thrown back at us this week with the announcement that Victoria Derbyshire and Shelagh Fogarty are leaving the station, after many years of award winning broadcasting. It’ll be sad to lose them, of course, and such talented and experienced presenters are incredibly hard to replace. But to say, as some have, that 5 Live is sidelining female talent, is completely wrong. No radio station in the country has such a great record of nurturing the careers of women broadcasters.

Jane Garvey, Fi Glover, Anita Anand and Asmah Mir are just a few of the top presenters who had their big break on network radio at 5 Live. The current crop, including Rachel Burden, Anna Foster, Sam Walker and Caroline Barker, plus new recruits Sarah Brett and Georgie Thompson, will ensure that female voices run through the DNA of the station, as they always have.

Twenty years ago, I was one of the Radio 5 Live “originals’, when the station went on air. In 1991, I was brought across from Radio One’s Newsbeat by Bob Shennan, now Controller of Radio 2, to be the first regular female sports presenter on national radio. I went to my first Olympics in 1992, and I haven’t missed a summer Games since, even while bringing up my two daughters. This year I spent three weeks in Sochi, and after Wimbledon, I’ll be off to the Commonwealth Games in Glasgow.

This week, it’s 30 years since I started my first job in radio, and I’d never have believed back then that I’d have such a fascinating, challenging and fun career.

Over the last two decades at 5 Live, I’ve worked on pretty much every show on the station, news and sport. My current pattern of Thursday night’s 5 Live Sport and Saturday Breakfast suits me down to the ground - I spend so much time away at sports events, it’s good to be able to have time at home to be Mum, to go to my daughters’ school plays and netball matches.

And now I’m really excited to be adding a Friday lunchtime sports preview show to the mix. It’s been pointed out that I’ll be the only solo female presenter on weekdays, but in my view that’s no big deal. From Breakfast until the end of Drive every day, the only time you won’t have a woman as a main on-air voice is the three hours between 10am and 1pm. The rest of the schedule (with the exception of the legendary Mayo and Kermode Film Show on a Friday) is a male/female “double header”. And it’s an insult to the top women broadcasters in those teams - Rachel, Anna, Sarah, or me - to insinuate that we’re the junior partner, some kind of fluffy, giggly sidekick. Just listen back to Rachel’s brilliant reporting from Camp Bastion last week if you want proof of that.

Do I wish there were more women broadcasters out there? Of course I do. Does every station put their female presenters at the heart of the output, as 5 Live does? Sadly not.

I recently heard of a young, female, football-mad breakfast show presenter on a commercial radio station who was told she couldn’t talk about the World Cup on air. She had to leave the footy chat to her male co-host.

It’s a long way from a perfect world for female radio presenters. But Radio 5 Live are doing a great deal more than others to change that world. I wouldn’t still be here after 20 years if they weren’t.

Eleanor Oldroyd is a sports presenter, 5 Live

Read Jonathan Wall's announcement on 5 live's schedule changes.
Listen to 5 live via iPlayer Radio

Schedule changes at 5 live

2014-07-01T07:14:27+00:00

Today I have just shared with the team here at 5 live a major set of schedule changes.

It is a sad time as, within this, we say goodbye to three of the great stars of 5 live, but it's also an exciting time as we look ahead to the next stage in our life here in Salford.

We say farewell to Victoria Derbyshire who has an exciting new opportunity with �鶹Լ�� News, details of which will be announced in the next few months. Victoria will stay with us until September and will play a big part in our Commonwealth Games plans. We will miss both her forensic interviewing ability and her award-winning investigative journalism.

We also say goodbye to Shelagh Fogarty in the autumn. Shelagh is considering a number of exciting new opportunities and leaves us with a fantastic legacy of broadcasting from Lourdes to the House of Lords and from refugee camps in Jordan to the London 2012 Paralympic Games.

And finally, after creating a new sound for late night radio for us and successfully hosting our afternoon show, our final farewell is to Richard Bacon. Richard also has lots of exciting new opportunities including co-presenting a new prime-time �鶹Լ�� One series with Una Stubbs.

And so, with these fond farewells, we have the chance to relaunch our daytime line-up, with two new shows I am very excited about.

5 live Daily will be our new weekly 10am-1pm slot hosted by 5 live favourites Peter Allen and Adrian Chiles.

I first thought about moving Peter to this new slot back in March when I heard him presenting a special edition of the mid-morning programme during our 20th anniversary celebrations. He loved the freedom to do longer interviews and speak to callers, and it’s the fresh challenge he wanted after all those fantastic years on Drive. Peter said,

"After twenty years at 5 live I remain as enthusiastic as ever about the station. I love it in particular because of its audience, and the new show will in essence be a conversation with that audience."

And Adrian has been such a strong addition to the team since we brought him back last year to present the Drive show on fridays. He’s a real all-rounder and has told me, on the phone from Brazil, how excited he is by this opportunity.

Afternoon Edition is our second new show with a new timeslot, 1-4pm, and a new double act: Sarah Brett, our new signing from Radio Foyle in Northern Ireland, and Dan Walker from �鶹Լ�� TV Sport. Sarah is the best new radio news presenter in the UK and is brilliant at interviewing and handling live radio. Dan has impressed us with his creativity on Friday night sport and, after hearing the stunning documentary he produced and presented for us from Camp Bastion earlier this year, I knew he would be perfect for this show. Dan and Sarah gelled together brilliantly in their pilot and I am looking forward to hearing them and our listeners together in the afternoons on 5 live.

And so to Tony Livesey, who will be our new Drive presenter. Tony really deserves this opportunity and I have had a move like this mind for him since I got the Controller job. He's a good journalist and a real natural in a radio studio. I know he and Anna Foster will form a great partnership.

Elsewhere in the 5 live schedule we have a fresh new feel to Fighting Talk with two new hosts, Georgie Thompson and Josh Widdicombe. We have been keeping an eye on Georgie for a while and she is someone who has always impressed us so we are really pleased to have her join our team. And, as for Josh, he is really funny, has great radio experience and is the perfect fit for the show.

And then finally to 5 live Sport, currently in the throes of a fantastic summer of sporting coverage. Our chief football correspondent Mike Ingham is retiring from commentary after the World Cup final but luckily for us isn't retiring from our station. Mike was commentating back in 1979 when I first fell in love with the magic of speech radio as a seven year old boy and 5 live just wouldn’t be the same without him. So I am really pleased that he will still be with us next year hosting football specials across the season. John Murray will be our new football correspondent and I can't think of a better man for the job! In other football announcements we have confirmed that Jason Roberts, one of the UK's top new pundits will be hosting football nights on 5 live sports extra and joining our squad of match summarisers.

It's a great time at 5 live, we are currently delivering some of the biggest online listening figures in 5 live’s history and our new look 5 live in short has just given us 1 million listening requests to our online world of short-form content. But we know we need to keep moving forward and, after what promises to be a fantastic summer, we will be in just the right place for this re-fresh. We are all really looking forward to the challenge.

Jonathan Wall is Controller, 5 live

Read more information about the 5 live changes including the new line-up on the Media Centre website.
Jonathan Wall will be participating in a Q and A on the 5 live Twitter account from midday today.
Listen to 5 live via iPlayer Radio

5 live breakfast across the UK

2014-04-27T16:33:52+00:00

Rachel Burden introduces a week of special outside broadcasts on �鶹Լ�� 5 live - an opportunity for the station to get closer to the stories of its listeners.

"Come and see us, come here and really experience what it’s like for us living here at the moment - houses destroyed, livelihoods shattered, families under stress – but also surviving and helping each other…"

That was the message we heard time and again during the recent flooding which hit Somerset and parts of the south east of England. And there’s no doubt that there are moments when it’s time to leave the studio and get to the heart of the story.

This week, on 5 live Breakfast, Nicky, Adam Parsons and I are going to do just that - see the stories for ourselves, meet and spend time with the people involved, and immerse ourselves in the lives of our listeners.

I’ve been lucky to have had many memorable assignments on the road with 5 live that have taught me more than I could ever learn from sitting behind a desk in the studio.

South Africa for example just hours after the death of Nelson Mandela was announced. I stood outside his house late at night and watched hundreds of people lighting candles, singing joyfully and dancing.

Going inside the gated walls of a mainly white middle class estate to talk to Ali Bacher, the former South African cricketer who was behind the rebel cricket tours to the country, I was greeted at the door by his black maid. It felt like stepping back in time.

I was also shown incredible hospitality by a young mum living in Alexandra township, one of the poorest areas of the country. She took me into her parents’ tiny one roomed home and invited me to share some fried chicken and mealie – a sort of cross between semolina and mashed potato.

Only by being there and talking to these people, seeing their lives with my own eyes, could I understand how Mandela was so revered, but also that his successors still faced so many challenges.

Some outside broadcasts (OBs in radio speak) are weeks, months or even years in the planning. Others just a matter of hours. But often it’s the chance encounters that prove to be the most powerful.

Earlier this year 5 live Breakfast visited Clacton-on-Sea as we looked at some of the problems facing Britain’s seaside towns. Nicky was just finishing an interview at a drug rehab centre when a young woman approached him. Her name was Helena and she wanted to talk….about how she’d been abused as a child, had become a heroin addict, had seen her best friend murdered and was now trying to rebuild her life for the sake of her own family. Without getting out of the studio to places like Clacton we never would have heard Helena’s remarkable story.

Being on the road can also help forge a closer bond with our audience and I’ve never felt that more strongly than during the London Olympics. Through texts and tweets listeners told us that they felt they were part of that Olympic experience because 5 live Breakfast was there, every morning, sticking our noses into whatever was going on, on their behalf.

Away from the athletes it was the spectators and volunteers who really made it memorable. The families who’d driven through the night to get to the venues, the volunteers who sang the crowds into the Olympic Park, the fabulously efficient and courteous members of the armed forces who processed thousands of people through security each day. It was unforgettable, and I hope for those who listened at home, in the car, at work, it brought the whole experience to life – that we all felt that tingle together.

Sure, there are sometimes technical problems when you’re on the road. Weather is always a hazard – too wet, too windy, too bright. And very often it’s a race against time to get to a location, find the right people to talk to, and set up whatever equipment you’ve managed to grab. If you’re lucky, you’ll have one of our brilliant engineers who always seem to be able to fashion a radio studio out of a couple of boxes, a few long leads and a microphone.

One memorable occasion when we weren’t so lucky, was the Sunday after the 2007 Rugby World Cup final. I was at a rugby club in Hampshire, where we were struggling to get on air, even as the seconds to the top of the programme were ticking away. Refusing to panic and being distracted by the tuck shop beside me, my first words were something along the lines of ‘pass me those sweets’. Not the text book way to start a show.

But the greatest privilege about being on an outside broadcast is the freedom to roam, explore and meet the people we talk about and talk to every day. I hope you’ll listen next week. We’ll be all over the UK, including Inverness looking at life after the Armed Forces, in Somerset talking to those who’ve lived through the floods, and in Kent with families of children with special education needs.

I’m looking forward to being on the road and hope you’ll join us along the way. Keep in touch with your own stories - one day you may find us battling with maps, microphones and satellite dishes at a location not far from you.

Rachel Burden is a journalist and presenter on 5 live Breakfast

5 live Breakfast's outside broadcasts run from Monday 28 April - 1 May. Listen via �鶹Լ�� 5 live online.

Radio 5 live celebrates 20 years

2014-03-28T11:16:58+00:00

�鶹Լ�� Radio 5 live and I go back a long way. It was my route into radio. My earliest radio memories are listening to the football scores with my Dad during Radio Sport on Radio 2 back in 1979. Fifteen years later - a postgrad journalism student at Falmouth College - I was listening to the 5 live launch day. I was desperate to get a job in the media and looking back now I think listening to the launch must have helped me to eventually get into the trade, because it happened only a few months later: as a sports and news broadcast journalist in local radio at Radio Humberside.

Jane Garvey presents 5 live's first programme broadcast at 5am 28 Mar 1994.

As a journalism student inerested in politics and sport, 5 Live was a sort of dream station for me. Radio Five, it's predecessor, had been a mish-mash of children's programmes, sport, education output and some news - something a little bit more difficult for me as a listener to understand what it was exactly. But a dedicated news and sport station for the network from 1994 made more obvious sense and with more radio output needed for more live broadcasting hours, little wonder it stimulated local radio, providing more opportunities for new-starters.

Soon after I joined Humberside, I moved into TV sport as a researcher in 1996. But I realised soon after that I missed the excitement of live radio. A job as a sports bulletin producer for 5 live followed in 1998. I became Deputy Controller in 2008, and Controller just last year.

During that time, I think the station's enduring appeal has been the conversational tone which was then - and to a certain extent still is now - one of the most unique things in radio. 5 live has a largely unscripted conversation with the audience threaded through its output. Its a topical, live debate, breaking news and sport station. There are plenty of similarities with how we were as a station twenty years ago: we've stayed true to what our purpose in life is.

But there's something rather special about its spirit. Something that people who visit Salford have commented to me back in London. It's to do with the energy which comes from the 5 live operation. Energy you can hear from the output.

Putting our news and sport alongside one another has definitely energised staff - sport's reporting has benefitted news, and storytelling techniques in news have benefitted our sports journalism. Bringing those two things closer together helps share skills and experience more readily. More than that though, I believe that if you're an all-day live radio station, there's excitement from every part of the station wherever you are on the floor. It's infectious as you walk around the building here in Salford.

Richard Bacon presents from 5 live's studio at MediaCityUK 2012.

Of course, there's a challenge with that: you have to make all the different subject areas gel together. We've done that this week with swapping presenters around for the 20th anniversary and its really worked well, in the same way that the bringing together of Olympics and 5 live did so successfully in 2012. When it works well you can see it in the office and hear it on the radio too.

The ability to set ourselves up in Salford has had a massive effect on us too. Getting the technical side set up exactly how we needed it to be for our programmes was a great opportunity for us. Practically it made it better for us to work as one station. Inevitably, when the entire station moved, new people arrived too - so there's been a re-energising from that as well.

With any birthday, a card needs to be written. (We'll be having cake too, on Friday lunchtime, cut by our very own Peter Allen). So, what would I say in the birthday card? I suspect I'd need a big card. There are a lot of people to shout out to. First, I'd thank the people who've worked on the station over the last 20 years and cared so much about it: a committed hard-working bunch of people who love working on 5 Live and are responsible for making it all happen. But, the audience gets a share of the birthday love too, an audience with whom we have, what I think is, a unique relationship. They'll tell us when they like it and they'll also tell us when they think we've got it wrong - we really appreciate that. It's a special thing for me because it demonstrates that the audience truly are part of the shows we make, as much as the production staff and the presenters.

Thank you, all of you. Share in the birthday love. And if there's not enough cake to go round, I'll just take half a slice.

Jonathan Wall is Controller of Radio 5 live.

See more images of Radio 5 live's 20 year history.
Listen to Radio 5 live.
Follow @bbc5live on twitter.

The 5 live blog: Answering your questions about 5 live

2009-11-20T11:58:30+00:00

Over at the excellent 5 Live blog, controller Adrian Van Klaveren has engaged with questions raised in a comment on a previous post concerning the schedule changes. For your chance to enter into this lively debate, head over to the 5 Live blog.