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BBC Radio 7
BBC 7 logo
Broadcast area Flag of the United Kingdom UK - National
Frequency DAB: 12B
Freeview: 708
Freesat: 708
Sky: 0131
Virgin Media: 910
Tiscali TV: 633
UPC Ireland: 929
Live Stream Real/WM
First air date 15 December 2002
Format Comedy, Drama, and Children's programming
Audience share 0.5% (March 2008, [1])
Owner BBC
Website www.bbc.co.uk/radio7/

BBC Radio 7 (formerly BBC 7 until 4 October 2008) is a national digital radio station broadcasting comedy, drama, and children's programming 24 hours a day. It is the principal broadcasting outlet for the BBC's vast archive of spoken-word entertainment, and was established specifically to enable the contents of the BBC Sound Archives to be broadcast.

Programmes qualify for broadcast on Radio 7 if they are either three years old or more, or if they have previously been broadcast twice on their original station. However, even if a programme fulfils these criteria, there may be copyright issues preventing it from appearing on BBC Radio 7. However, programmes made exclusively for the station are exempt from this rule.

The schedule spans the decades, from The Goon Show (1950s) and Round the Horne (1960s), through Radio 2 favourites like The News Huddlines, Castle's in the Air and Listen to Les to recent Radio 4 shows such as Little Britain and Dead Ringers.

As a speech network, BBC Radio 7 was unique from the start in carrying no news, with the exception of a daily bulletin aimed at younger listeners presented by the Newsround team at 7.55am on weekdays. Adopting a very informal style of presentation, its continuity announcing team are associated with themed blocks of programming and are promoted as personalities & presenters in their own right. This was taken one step further on 14th February 2005, when an hour long strand of comedy was introduced between 8am and 9am, initially presented by Richard Bacon, now with sister station 5 Live. Current regular presenters are Penny Haslam, Jim Lee, Etholle George, Joanna Pinnock, Alex Riley and Michaela Saunders, with cover presenters Alan Smith, Helen Aitken and the late Kevin Greening.

There is speculative fiction of various kinds, science fiction, fantasy or horror seven days a week in a regular slot called The 7th Dimension which is broadcast on Radio 7 twice a day, at 6pm and midnight (UK time). In early 2007, this slot featured a series of original Doctor Who audio dramas, starring Paul McGann as the Eighth Doctor.

Paul Merton launched the station at 8pm on 15 December 2002 in a simulcast with Radio 4. It was originally codenamed Network Z.

The station's remit requires it to carry children's programming, which, until 2007, came in the form of two daily shows: The Little Toe Radio Show which was aimed at younger children and consisted of short serials, stories and rhymes that ran from 7am - 8am and was repeated at 3pm - 4pm. Big names like Roger McGough were regular contributors; and The Big Toe Radio Show which aired from 4pm - 6pm and consisted of phone-ins, quizzes as well as stories intended for the 8+ age group. In February 2007 the schedule changed and Big Toe Books took over the 7am slot, but dropped the phone-ins and quizzes for children aged 8 and up while Cbeebies Radio replaced The Little Toe Show and now runs in a longer slot from 2pm - 5pm. These programmes almost entirely contain original material.

Radio 7 does broadcast some original programming. Spanking New on Seven is a stand-up comedy programme, and they annually broadcast the BBC New Comedy Competition, a competition for new stand up comedians. People who have took part in BBC comedy competitions have went on to have their own series on Radio 7, such as John-Luke Roberts with Spats and Miriam Elia with A Series of Psychotic Episodes. The Mitch Benn Music Show features comedy songs introduced by Mitch Benn. Colin and Fergus' Digi Radio is a comedy sketch show on its second series as of 2006. Serious About Comedy is a weekly show presented by Robin Ince where comedians and comedy critics discuss comedy television, radio, DVDs, and films from the last week. Tilt is a satirical sketch show which looks at the week's news of views other than the norm. Knocker is a sitcom about a market researcher.

The flagship comedy section on Radio 7 is The Comedy Club, hosted by Alex Riley (Monday to Friday) and Penny Haslam (Sunday) . Pitched as "two hours of contemporary comedy", it is broadcast from 10pm to midnight Sunday to Friday, and repeated between 3 and 5am the following morning. Comedy that has previously been commercially available as cassettes on the Laughing Stock label is also broadcast.

The network also features output from North America such as the American series Garrison Keillor's Radio Show and The Twilight Zone, and Stuart McLean's Vinyl Cafe from Canada.

BBC 7 won the Sony Radio Academy Award for Station Sound in 2003, was nominated for the Promo Award in 2004, and in 2005 received a Silver for the Short-Form award, plus nominations in the Speech Award and Digital Terrestrial Station Of The Year Award.

The station can be heard worldwide on the Internet, across northern Europe via the Astra 2A satellite (including via Freesat and Sky), and in the UK on DAB digital radio, cable television, IPTV and Freeview digital terrestrial television.

Original programming

While most of the shows on Radio 7 are repeats, there is some original programming such as:

See also

External links

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