• Home
• Blog
• About us

Statements of Programme Policy

Radio 1 Programme Policy 2010/2011

Service remit

The remit of Radio 1 is to entertain and engage a broad range of young listeners with a distinctive mix of contemporary music and speech. Its target audience is 15-29 year olds and it should also provide some programming for younger teenagers.

It should offer a range of new music, support emerging artists – especially those from the UK – and provide a platform for live music. News, documentaries and advice campaigns should cover areas of relevance to young adults.

Controller's vision for the service in 2010/2011

Radio 1 was established in 1967 in response to the seismic shifts in youth music and culture during the Sixties and was designed to connect the BBC to younger audiences with a service of their own. For it to continue succeeding in the 21st century I believe it is vital we remain true to that original mission, constantly evolving and regenerating to attract the next generation of listeners. To add to the challenge, we must do this today in a technological and cultural environment which is changing faster than ever before.

My ambition for Radio 1 is for it to be a leading voice of young UK culture, delivering a high-quality and distinctive service. We already enjoy a deserved reputation for supporting the best new music and acting as a champion for emerging UK artists. In Newsbeat we offer a level of news provision designed specifically for our young audiences, which the rest of the market is unable to sustain. I believe we can do more, however, and will be challenging our production teams this year to devise bigger and bolder creative projects, and to deliver social action campaigns which resonate with the audience.

Key to our long-term success will be our ability to recruit new listeners at the younger end of our target audience and so we will be enlarging the current teen zone on Sunday evenings, aiming to provide an easy entry point for younger teens into the network. We must also ensure that our online interactive and visual elements keep pace with audience expectations.

I believe we are in a unique position to deliver important information and offer a platform for people to come together and share their music, experiences, views and opinions. Across the decades this is what Radio 1 at its best has done, and it is what I'm determined it will remain doing into the future.

Andy Parfitt, Controller, BBC Radio 1

Key Challenges for Radio 1 in 2010/2011

Challenge: Radio 1 has to ensure that it constantly evolves to attract the next generation of young listeners. Programming for teenagers in particular has an important role in this strategy, acting as a bridge for younger teens, helping them make the jump from the kind of programming offered by CBBC and others to that offered by the BBC's more youth-orientated brands such as Radio 1, Radio 1Xtra and BBC Three.

• We will extend the teen zone on Sunday evenings to include the Chart Show.
• Tom Deacon, who currently hosts the BBC Switch online 5:19 Show, will join Radio 1 to present a companion radio programme. Annie Mac and Nick Grimshaw will move to a new late Sunday evening slot, following The Surgery With Aled.
• We will continue to develop the new Fearne Cotton and Greg James weekday daytime programmes introduced last autumn, to ensure that they focus on serving 15-29 year olds. We will also work to identify potential new presenting talent for the future.

Challenge: Radio 1 has built a strong reputation for supporting a wide range of new music relevant to young audiences, but opportunities remain for developing distinctive and high-quality speech output so that it provides increased impact.

• Radio 1's The Surgery will be given an earlier timeslot and a brief to take a more journalistic approach, being responsive and reacting to topical issues of relevance.
• We will look to engage the audience in our news coverage of major stories in 2010, including the General Election, Afghanistan and unemployment – which had a proportionally bigger impact on our young audiences during the recent recession.
• Our new Radio 1's Stories strand will offer a wide range of documentaries. The Art Of Noise will go to the very edges of music aiming to search out the most experimental sounds on the planet. A further series of International Radio 1 will visit Africa, Asia and Europe's new clubbing hot-spot, Croatia.
• Regular campaigns during the year will focus the network on a number of key issues. A volunteering initiative will broadcast in April and we are also currently devising campaigns which will look at travel and at relationships.

Challenge: Younger audiences are at the forefront of new technology and Radio 1 must ensure that its interactive services adapt to meet changing habits. In particular, the growth of broadband continues to fuel increased demand for visual content.

• We will aim to capture more key moments visually, filming a selection of sessions and Live Lounge performances, as well as other significant programme features such as the entertainment news bulletin at 6.30pm.
• Our Official UK Chart online presence will be revamped and improved following the launch on air of the new midweek chart update in Greg James's show, celebrating UK chart history and culture.
• The Access All Areas experiment in 2009 demonstrated how our audience love to participate and interact with the network. We will look for further opportunities in this area in 2010, including exploring ways in which users can personalise how the Radio 1 homepage appears to them.
• We will aim to segment more audio elements from programmes, for example to make notable interviews easier to find and access. Where appropriate we will also look to syndicate material to third-party sites.

Challenge: As a national network based in London, Radio 1 must nevertheless work to ensure that it serves audiences equally across the UK.

• Radio 1's Big Weekend this year will be held in north Wales and we will work closely with BBC Cymru Wales to ensure that they are able to broadcast in Welsh from the event.
• Our live events calendar will reflect a range of events, both big and small, across the UK. We will return to Wales to cover Wakestock for the first time and make a first trip to RockNess in Scotland. We are also looking at opportunities for programming focused on Northern Ireland.
• Throughout the year we will aim to showcase the best of our specialist shows across the UK, through tours, festival coverage and one-off programmes from notable events.

Other programming highlights

Music

• We aim to celebrate the 10th Radio 1's Big Weekend with our most ambitious interactive coverage to date, allowing those not able to attend the event to enjoy extensive virtual access. In addition, in common with many other festivals around the UK, we will be looking at ways of making this year's event more environmentally sustainable.
• Scott Mills The Musical was Radio 1's unexpected hit at last year's Edinburgh Fringe Festival, collecting five-star reviews. We are currently looking at creative ideas for covering this year's event.
• With an ever greater number of organisations covering live music we will aim to ensure that our coverage remains distinct, offering a greater depth and range of coverage where possible, for example through related documentaries.

Sport

• Coverage of the World Cup will focus on how our audience are following the event in the UK.

Conditions: BBC purposes and Radio 1 commitments

Unless otherwise stated, all commitments are minimum hours or percentages and include originations, repeats and acquisitions.

Stimulating creativity and cultural excellence

• 60 hours of specialist music per week. (Specialist music is music that appeals to specific groups of listeners, focusing on a specific genre of music or on cutting-edge music from a range of genres.)
• 40% of music in daytime from UK acts. (Daytime is defined as 06.00-19.00 Monday-Friday and 08.00-14.00 Saturday-Sunday.)
• 45% of music in daytime that is new (either unreleased or less than one month since release – physical release, not download release).
• Broadcast from c.25 live and events from the UK and abroad.
• 250 new sessions (excluding repeats).
• Contribute to BBC Radio's commitment to commission at least 10% of eligible hours of output from independent producers.

Sustaining citizenship and civil society

• 1 hour of news in daytime each weekday, including two extended bulletins (with flexibility for holiday periods and occasional special schedule changes).
• Regular bulletins during daytime at weekends.

Promoting education and learning

• 40 new documentaries.
• At least two major social action campaigns.

Reflecting the UK, its nations, regions and communities

• 200 hours of original opt-outs from Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.

Related links