London Live

Quite a few recorded from Sky News as well, including full interviews.

It was going to be Sky News Radio for London at one point wasn't it?

Chrysalis were going to go into a contract with Sky to provide the rolling news service as Sky News Radio. However, Global acquired Chrysalis and I assume did the numbers and found it'd be cheaper to keep it in-house. They then cut the broadcast hours and at one point, the back half hours during the day were automated.

Before Chrysalis owned LBC the rolling news station was ITN branded and got a bit of a telling off by the Radio Authority for playing lots of TV news packages and content on the radio.


As for BBC Radio London, it's always struggled, even when it had a clear idea of what it was as GLR. Then they always said that it's audience numbers were low but the audience appreciation was massively high, it was a much loved station if not much listened.

It has suffered since Danny Baker was got rid of, he was the big name and had a passionate following. The thing is that now it has got the opportunity to seize a niche as it's the only London local radio station left. It's coverage of Grenfell and recent London terror attacks has been excellent.

It's a lot better now, with a more stable presenting lineup and (generally) fewer technical glitches.

What does Radio London and London Live have in common bar being called London Live after the disastrous GLR rebrand? Both are local, could put out the best output in the country and yet nobody bar a tiny audience for both would consume the output.

I agree there's nothing wrong with what Radio London does with regards to news, but it's all a bit wooden, niche (they actually have a weekly dog hour in daytime) and cliquey.

As I keep maintaining London Live would be massive across most offices, public houses, hotels and the other places that currently show BBC News and Sky News if it offers the right low cost info news service, it's different to speech radio in that it can be consumed publically and not individually. That would filter down to people watching a bit more in their homes.

Obviously what I'm proposing is a new model so we have no idea if it would work, but we also have no idea of it wouldn't work.

I'm sure if the Evening Standard don't want to try it someone else would, it's a waste of bandwidth and position just to allow them to be E4 or whatever they're doing this month.

Ah Jon, genius comment!

I'll kudos that even though it's sarcasm.

It actually isn't.

Answer: Jane Mote, who launched BBC London Live 94.9 in 2000 as BBC London's executive editor, replacing GLR, and 13 years later was launch programme director for ESTV's London Live.

I also struggle to see the point of Radio London in its current incarnation - scrapping GLR was vandalism (at least it helped inspire 6 Music) and the ratings are similar to what they were back then. The speech output is, as others have pointed out, wooden at best - Robert Elms aside - and the other USP, sports coverage, has been cut back to a skeleton (and often replaced on DAB by that terrible all-England show). Always found its news a bit limp - and between Feltz and Nestor you might have radio's worst breakfast/drivetime pairing.

The main killer is its adherence to BBC Local Radio's Dave 'n' Sue format. Cabbies aside, London's Dave 'n' Sues are often in the suburbs and don't really identify with the rest of the capital in the same way - something which would affect any London TV station's attempt to chase the same audience. Indeed, in many parts of London will be able to get surrounding BBC stations in the Home Counties that they'll identify with more closely, especially on DAB. (Indeed, many of Greater London's Dave 'n' Sues wouldn't even consider themselves London residents anyway.)

Heaven knows what you'd do with it, with the BBC's backing it can afford to go more newsy more easily than the competition - but instead you have the dog hour (http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p02qf424/p02tkk4z). Incidentally, GLR is reputed to have been closed because on the morning of the 1999 Paddington rail crash, Mark Thompson is said to have tuned his radio towards 94.9 and heard Lou Bega's Mambo No 5. But GLR had an all-speech breakfast show, and it's thought he'd actually tuned to Capital...