SPORT ON RADIO IS MORE THAN JUST 5 LIVE
IF YOU can’t be there, sport on the radio is the very best way to experience it — but then I would say that as the programme controller for talkSPORT. The masters of their art can use words to thrust you into the action and leave you feeling every kick, punch and overhead smash. This week I read with interest of the possible move by BBC Radio 5 Live to go online. It sparked debate about the importance of sports radio in the media landscape. Radio is as popular as ever and the investment in digital means that we can be a part of people’s lives in more ways than ever. Put simply, it’s very hard not to listen to the radio and talkSPORT is at the heart of its popularity. The station was cited in Ian Ladyman’s article on Wednesday as being awash with adverts, gimmicks and presenters shouting down the mic. This is not the station I recognise. With 3.1million listeners tuning in every week something must keep drawing them back. TalkSPORT has a daily line-up which boasts more than a 100 years of sports radio experience. Alan Brazil has been broadcasting four hours of breakfast radio every day (pretty much) for over 15 years. He is brilliant at it. Colin Murray has achieved the highest ever ratings in the 10am-1pm slot, Hawksbee and Jacobs in the afternoon have become a fixture bringing a unique mix of sport and comedy (where else could you get Gary Oldman talking Millwall followed by Gazza crying in the studio?) and Drive with Adrian Durham and Darren Gough is a fantastic show full of insight, entertainment and opinion. Stand-up comedians Jon Richardson and Matt Forde’s weekly Warm-Up show is the perfect Saturday lunchtime accompanimentop for the car journey to Loftus ftus Road or the Bullring,Bullring depending on your priorities. There’s a snobbery around mentions of talkSPORT with some saying ‘that’s not a station for me’ without actually listening. We are proud of being a successful commercial station without the luxury of millions of taxpayers’ money to fund it. We earn the right to broadcast every second of output and those pesky adverts pay for that Manchester United v Arsenal game exclusively live, presenter salaries and everything in between, including the kitchen sink. The station is a credible challenger to publicly funded BBC 5 Live and does it for a fraction of the cost. Live sport now dominates talkSPORT’s evenings and weekends with 150 games across all domestic competitions, plus European competitions and internationals. This will be augmented this summer by every game from Euro 2016. An array of pundits and hosts spanning eras including Stan Collymore, Mark Saggers, Sam Matterface, Danny Murphy, Ray Parlour and Stuart Pearce will share their analysis. The biggest change in our development is days away with the birth of talkSPORT 2 — a 24-hour digital channel with focus on delivering live rights outside of just football, including rugby union, rugby league, golf, cricket, tennis and US sport. It launches on March 15 live from the Cheltenham Festival. As a Sony Radio Station of the Year and Sports Journalism Award winner there is more to talkSPORT than just listeners wanting their manager sacked or presenters shouting down the microphone. We commiserate and we congratulate, we poke fun outwardly and inwardly and whether you tune in at midnight or midday we are part of sports fans’ lives and are proud to be so.