IIn January 1993, there were 10 websites. There aren’t 10 websites dedicated to changing the transmission fluid in a Lexus LS 400 sedan, and there aren’t 10 websites that dissect the moral world of Don’t Tell Mom the Nanny is Dead.As they say in the United States, ten websites period. This is the entire internet.
Fast forward to March 1994, and new borders are being hastily decided. Looking through the list of sites that were registered that year – Microsoft, BBC Online, Yahoo, and of course Bianca’s Smut Shack and Sex.com, honestly, they were onto something – there was a sense of empire in the building of a giant new world. Rising in the shadows, quietly taking their place.
Not many people noticed at the time. The most significant British media event in March 1994 was the launch of BBC Radio 5 Live, the UK’s first accessible rolling news and sports channel, and the BBC is marking its 30th anniversary with an impressive campaign this week .
Understandably so. Self-advertising is necessary for everyone to make a living. Even in this case it had to arrive in the familiar BBC cult tone, as if we were talking about the birth of a talking miracle horse rather than a live broadcast of sport, news debates and Gordon from Egham The platform who wants to talk about bollards.
Is 5 Live really as beloved, vital, and culturally significant as 5 Live thinks? Probably not. But it’s undeniably successful, adept at curating big shared moments as well as smaller ones, providing a high-quality platform for women in sport in front of and behind the microphone, and providing a platform for some truly outstanding broadcasters Finishing school.
Of the current roster, John Murray is a master of football reporting, delivering passionate, insightful reporting that is non-partisan, non-joking and non-editorial. Victoria Derbyshire can present anything from the Prime Minister’s resignation to the World Parmesan Grating Championship and it will be great, engaging and informative.
Otherwise, while it’s hard to have many really strong feelings about 5 Live, it’s also hard to deny that its anniversary means a lot. Mainly because its entire lifespan coincided with what was actually happening in those thirty years, which was the rise of the internet as the most powerful cultural medium on the planet. Because now is as good a time as any to think about the founding paradox of 5 Live, and the beautiful lie that underpins its existence.
Radio legend claims that the idea for a dedicated news and sports channel originally arose from the popularity of the BBC’s rolling coverage of the Gulf War. There was a general feeling at the time: new platforms, satellite TV, digital rights, the development of sports as a light entertainment commodity, and a feeling that sports would also be at the center of a constant “interactive” conversation.
This is the central myth of 5 Live: that it could, through a series of comprehensive BBC focus groups, locate the emotional center of Middle England, that there actually exists a Middle of England that can have an emotional center, and that would be a good thing. Somewhere in the white heat of this new dawn, AM radio, is where Yaris women meet Kingston men, a tolerant but unchanging English country square, a place where someone will offer you a Ribena The place where Tony Blair will fix everything by not wearing a tie when you fall off your bike outside their house, where your grandparents may have been racist but no longer because of their encounters with Daley Thompson is racist.
There, that sweet, quiet center can be accessed via radio, which is the equivalent of sitting on a bench outside a motorway service station eating a coronation chicken baguette and talking about the need for a national public register of pedophiles. Yes, you can get to this place, this secret garden, by broadcasting David Mellor’s post-match football opinions every Saturday for a decade.
A beautiful dream. But it turns out it’s too good for the world. Of course, what actually happened during that period was the rise of the internet and social media, 5 Live’s supervillain cousin. The actual national dialogue has proven to be relentless, fragmented, angry, divisive, and almost entirely incoherent.
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Sports have contributed greatly to this. It offers the timbre of that voice, that never-ending voice of sports as jokes, tribalism, silly debates about toxic non-issues, the voice of a man with a pork pie in his mouth, topless in Nigeria Sa locals were shouting outside. The statistics on referee conspiracy based on VAR are incorrect.
This is a terrible development for the BBC, which should be the loudest and hottest, but which is unable to pursue a fully commercial direction without fear of losing influence. 5 Live’s listenership increased from 5.5 million to 5.25 million in the anniversary quarter. UK News Radio is online. TalkSport and TalkRadio have emerged (Radio X Classic Rock is having a moment, by the way).
These latest figures are accompanied by a common refrain about the need to choose and deliver what people want or think they want, which still sounds like a terrible idea. The BBC shouldn’t be doing this. More Derbyshire. Less jokes. Inform and educate. This is something it can still do.
By comparison, shared digital spaces feel wild, scary, and difficult to read or cater to. But it’s a very scary thought, to be able to hear and see the thoughts of 7 billion people at once, filtered through the most divisive algorithms. Shockingly enters your sight. No wonder we might see ghosts and monsters, London is filled with rats that want to stab you, thousands of involuntary people masturbating like crazy, woke thugs – real thugs – coming to steal your Hot Cross bread.
In this context, 5 Live and its lost dream of a village square might actually be closer to this model, or at least a nice place to hide. Lie to me a little longer. Give me Chris Sutton’s gentle teatime scoldings and phone calls about bin collection times. Talk to me about sausage rolls while the world burns.