''Up All Night'' is a late night
phone-in
In broadcasting, a phone-in or call-in is a programme format in which viewers or listeners are invited to air their live comments by telephone, usually in respect of a specific topic selected for discussion on the day of the broadcast. On radio ( ...
programme broadcast on the national news/sport station
BBC Radio 5 Live
BBC Radio 5 Live is a British national radio station owned and operated by the BBC that broadcasts mainly news, sport, discussion, interviews and phone-ins. It is the principal BBC radio station covering sport in the United Kingdom, broadcast ...
in the United Kingdom, usually on air between 1and 5am every night. It is also broadcast on most of the
BBC's local radio frequencies across England as well as on
Radio Scotland
Radio Scotland was an offshore pirate radio station broadcasting on 1241 kHz mediumwave (242 metres), created by Tommy Shields in 1965. The station was on the former lightship L.V. ''Comet'', which had been fitted out as a radio station in ...
,
Radio Wales and
Radio Ulster
BBC Radio Ulster ( ga, BBC Raidió Uladh) is a Northern Irish radio station owned and operated by BBC Northern Ireland, a division of the BBC. It was established on New Year's Day 1975, replacing what had been an opt-out of BBC Radio 4. It is ...
.
''
The Washington Post
''The Washington Post'' (also known as the ''Post'' and, informally, ''WaPo'') is an American daily newspaper published in Washington, D.C. It is the most widely circulated newspaper within the Washington metropolitan area and has a large nati ...
'' once described the show, in its previous guise as a news and current affairs show, as probably the best night-time radio show in the world.
History
Originally a news and current affairs show with occasional topical phone-ins, ''Up All Night'' was broadcast continuously from Radio 5 Live's launch on the 28 March 1994 until 27 March 2020. The show originally lasted three hours and was extended to four from 1998.
One of the show's two main presenters,
Rhod Sharp, had proposed the idea of an all-night radio show for the new station that made use of the BBC's correspondents from all over the world.
[ He continued to present several shows each week (Monday to Wednesday) until March 2020, when he stepped down. ]Dotun Adebayo
Oludotun Davey Moore "Dotun" Adebayo (born 25 August 1959) is a British radio presenter, writer, and publisher. He is best known for his work on '' Up All Night'' on BBC Radio 5 Live, as well as the obituary programme ''Brief Lives''.
Early ...
was the show's second main presenter, hosting the show from Friday night to Sunday night. Other presenters included Richard Dallyn, Dalya Raphael and Russell Fuller
Russell Fuller is a British sports broadcaster. He was one of the three main presenters of Sportsworld (radio) which can be heard Saturday and Sunday on BBC World Service, and a regular presenter on BBC Radio Five Live. The average weekly audie ...
.
Up All Night used guest presenters regularly on Thursday nights (Friday mornings) from 3 November 2017. The first guest was Richard Foster, then Tom Green, and Rachael Bland
Rachael Rebecca Bland (née Hodges; 21 January 1978 – 5 September 2018) was a British journalist and presenter from Cardiff, Wales. She worked for BBC Radio 5 Live, BBC World News and '' BBC North West Tonight''. She was known for her podcast ...
.
Following the departure of Sharp in March 2020, coinciding with the COVID-19
Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is a contagious disease caused by a virus, the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). The first known case was COVID-19 pandemic in Hubei, identified in Wuhan, China, in December ...
lockdown, the programme was temporarily replaced by a nightly phone-in show from BBC Radio London
BBC Radio London is the Local BBC Radio, BBC's local radio station serving Greater London and its surrounding areas. The station broadcasts across the area and beyond, on the 94.9 FM broadcasting, FM frequency, Digital Audio Broadcasting, DAB, ...
, syndicated across BBC local radio stations. Adebayo moved to the weeknight slot and some popular features, such as the World Football Phone-In, were carried over.
On 6 July 2020, the programme returned to Five Live with a heavily revised format. Other than a short 10 to 15 minute interlude at the beginning of the show, it is almost entirely given over to the public phone-in format. Some features, such as the World Football Phone-In, have been carried over, but the regular updates on news stories around the world, including regular conversations with BBC overseas correspondents, have been largely abandoned.
Broadcast locations
Originally broadcast from studios at Broadcasting House
Broadcasting House is the headquarters of the BBC, in Portland Place and Langham Place, London. The first radio broadcast from the building was made on 15 March 1932, and the building was officially opened two months later, on 15 May. The main ...
, London and then from studios at Television Centre, the show's production, along with the rest of the BBC Radio 5 Live scheduled programmes, moved to MediaCityUK
MediaCityUK is a mixed-use property development on the banks of the Manchester Ship Canal in Salford, Greater Manchester, England. The project was developed by Peel Media; its principal tenants are media organisations and the Quayside MediaCi ...
, Salford, Greater Manchester
Salford () is a city and the largest settlement in the City of Salford metropolitan borough in Greater Manchester, England. In 2011, Salford had a population of 103,886. It is also the second and only other city in the metropolitan county aft ...
in 2012.
After 9/11, where he reported for BBC News, and while taking a sabbatical, Sharp and his wife fell in love with the fishing town of Marblehead, Massachusetts
Marblehead is a coastal New England town in Essex County, Massachusetts, along the North Shore (Massachusetts), North Shore. Its population was 20,441 at the 2020 United States Census, 2020 census. The town lies on a small peninsula that extends ...
, in the United States
The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territorie ...
. From 2004 to 2020, he presented the show (Monday to Wednesday) from the town. Initially using the studios and ISDN
Integrated Services Digital Network (ISDN) is a set of communication standards for simultaneous digital transmission of voice, video, data, and other network services over the digitalised circuits of the public switched telephone network. Wo ...
line of local radio station WESX
WESX (1230 AM) is a radio station broadcasting a religious and multi-cultural format, licensed to broadcast in the Nahant, Massachusetts, precinct. The station is owned by Real Media Group, LLC.
Programming is in Spanish, Portuguese, Creole, and ...
. From 2007, he presented the show from a home studio within the couple's 18th-century house in Marblehead's Old Town section. Broadcasting from the United States made Sharp "pretty unique" among BBC radio hosts, according to former BBC deputy news director Stephen Mitchell.[
]
Features
The show had a heavy interest in the United States, partly due to the favourable time differences between North America and the UK, and often featured news and interviews from there. The Super Bowl
The Super Bowl is the annual final playoff game of the National Football League (NFL) to determine the league champion. It has served as the final game of every NFL season since 1966, replacing the NFL Championship Game. Since 2022, the game ...
was also broadcast in an extended programme for some years.
The programme launched a couple of Twitter
Twitter is an online social media and social networking service owned and operated by American company Twitter, Inc., on which users post and interact with 280-character-long messages known as "tweets". Registered users can post, like, and ...
pages and has a group on Facebook
Facebook is an online social media and social networking service owned by American company Meta Platforms. Founded in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg with fellow Harvard College students and roommates Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum, Dustin M ...
. Some elements of the show were available to download by podcast
A podcast is a program made available in digital format for download over the Internet. For example, an episodic series of digital audio or video files that a user can download to a personal device to listen to at a time of their choosing ...
. Namely; Game On (under the Let's Talk About Tech thread), World Football Phone-In and Dr Karl.
Regular features
The programme gained a cult audience because of its off-beat approach to the news combined with various regular features. These included -
*Monday: The Phone-in, topics have included gardening, parenting and DIY.
*Tuesday: Game On, video game culture explored. This is the BBC's oldest games focused strand and has been produced in its current form since 2008.
*Wednesday: East Coast / West Coast: a regular look at US news and culture from either Los Angeles or New York.
*Thursday: Science questions to Dr Karl who joined the show from the Australian ABC
ABC are the first three letters of the Latin script known as the alphabet.
ABC or abc may also refer to:
Arts, entertainment, and media Broadcasting
* American Broadcasting Company, a commercial U.S. TV broadcaster
** Disney–ABC Television ...
network.
*Friday: The North American Sports Show, the first edition was broadcast in September 2018.
*Saturday: World Football Phone-In, with journalists Tim Vickery (South America), Mina Rzouki (Europe), Jon Arnold (Central and North America), Mark Meadows (Europe), Paul Sarahs (Europe), John Duerden (Asia) and Mark Gleeson (Africa) covering some of the world's football
Football is a family of team sports that involve, to varying degrees, kicking a ball to score a goal. Unqualified, the word ''football'' normally means the form of football that is the most popular where the word is used. Sports commonly c ...
hotbeds.
*Sunday: The Virtual Jukebox, where callers suggested and then voted on a music track to be added to a growing list of tunes. A playlist is available on Spotify
Spotify (; ) is a proprietary Swedish audio streaming and media services provider founded on 23 April 2006 by Daniel Ek and Martin Lorentzon. It is one of the largest music streaming service providers, with over 456 million monthly active us ...
Up All Night's Virtual Jukebox by upallnight5live
Spotify
For many years from the beginning of the programme the film critic, Dave Aldridge was a weekly contributor. In 2007 the programme pioneered a monthly live mental health phone-in with regular guest, Martin Seager, Consultant Clinical Psychologist and adult psychotherapist who headed an NHS
The National Health Service (NHS) is the umbrella term for the publicly funded healthcare systems of the United Kingdom (UK). Since 1948, they have been funded out of general taxation. There are three systems which are referred to using the " ...
psychological services department in the London area.
Another notable former contributor was Cash Peters
Cashman "Cash" Peters (born 6 June 1956) is a British author and broadcaster who writes on travel and spiritual matters, and has published two mystery novels. He is also a handwriting analyst.
Early life and career
Peters was born in Stockpor ...
, who reported from California on the latest US television news.
References
External links
*
* Let's Talk About Tech - http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p02nrxgq/episodes/downloads
{{BBC Radio 5 Live
BBC Radio 5 Live programmes