Sustaining citizenship and civil society
News is the backbone of Five Live’s output. We provide current, accurate and impartial information and up-to-date coverage of events around the UK and the world as they happen 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, in a style that makes the output accessible to its audience.

This commitment to news throughout the schedule means that news stories are not confined to short slots, but can be developed, analysed and put in context. We aim to encourage and inform debate, covering political issues in an inclusive, accessible manner.

Programmes such as Victoria Derbyshire and Simon Mayo give people the opportunity to join in the debate that arises from the news. Five Live will continue to use interactive technologies to involve listeners as much as possible.

A specific programme this year will be:

• Access All Areas – Scotland Yard, which will go behind the scenes at Scotland Yard for a day, allowing listeners unprecedented access to this institution.

Stimulating creativity and cultural excellence
Five Live will continue to cover important events in the national sporting calendar that form part of our lives and culture, including:

– the FA Cup and FA Cup final

– the tennis from Wimbledon

– the Rugby Union Six Nations Championship

– golf, including the Open Championship from Royal Liverpool

We also provide commentaries on the big international sporting events that unite people across the UK in support of national sporting talent, especially this year the FIFA World Cup, plus Open tennis from Australia, France and the USA, and golf. We draw on our listeners’ passions for sport to stimulate their creativity, using interactivity and competitions.

Five Live news programmes – also supported interactively though bbc.co.uk/fivelive – reflect significant aspects of British cultural and civic life, reporting on big events in the worlds of theatre, film, music, art, literature, TV and radio.

This year Five Live will:

• Provide comprehensive coverage of the 2006 World Cup, from both a sport and a sports news perspective.

Reflecting the UK’s nations, regions and communities
Sport is a British passion, and Five Live connects people around sporting events and key points in the sporting calendar, building a shared sense of community around the event itself and the subsequent online communities that grow out of it and the wider sports agenda. Outside broadcasts from football matches and other live events are an integral component of the Five Live sports offer.

Five Live’s team of regional journalists – including a hub of news and sports journalists established in Manchester last year – ensure that stories and the interests of different areas and communities are represented.

This year, Five Live will:

• Continue to offer interactive opportunities for listeners, including phone-ins, live debates and on-air requests for emails and text messages, through programmes such as Breakfast, Worricker, 6-0-6 and Drive.
• Build on its relationship with BBC Asian Network, providing another platform for some of the original reporting initiated by that service.

Bringing the world to the UK and the UK to the world
Five Live draws on the expertise of the BBC’s global newsgathering operation to report the news from around the world. The 24-hour nature of the service means that time differences have limited significance – news can be broken live on air whenever and wherever it is happening.

We will continue to bring news of the major sporting events around the world, such as the NFL Superbowl, Formula One and cycling’s Tour de France.

This year, we will:

• Build on our global coverage of Formula One, exploiting the rights still further as we develop our relationship with the new independent production team responsible for this coverage.

Building digital Britain
Audience interaction is central to the Five Live proposition – from on-air contributions via phone-ins, texts and email, to a dynamic online presence that supports programme content, provides a forum for debate and directs listeners’ online journey to find other areas of interest. Programmes and commentary are streamed online when rights allow, and Five Live online offers on-demand programming and downloads to give listeners even more choice in how and when they listen.

bbc.co.uk/fivelive will evolve to keep abreast of new technology and to increase the accessibility and value of our content.

This year, the network will:

• Further promote its website on air in an attempt to increase the number of listeners accessing the service via the internet.
• Aim to be more efficient at guiding listeners between Five Live and Five Live Sports Extra to ensure that they gain access to the full range of sports and matches on offer.

Promoting education and learning
Five Live aims to explore and explain the news, provide listeners with background information and expert insight, and give a fresh perspective on current affairs.

We blend news, sport, business, politics, entertainment and up-to-the-minute breaking stories within one programme, exposing our listeners to a broad range of subject matter that they may not otherwise come across.

Five Live Report, documentaries and specials look in depth at topical issues across the news and sport agendas.

This year:

• Sport on Five will build on its investigative work in the sporting world.
• Weekend News will be relaunched, with Jon Pienaar presenting and a new emphasis on politics.

A major success in 2005 for Five Live was our collaboration with BBC Asian Network and 1Xtra in covering the General Election, culminating in an unprecedented joint broadcast of the results. Audience interaction demonstrated that we had managed to reach some of those not usually engaged with the political process. We also set up our news team in Manchester as part of the process of moving more BBC journalists out of London and reaching a wider audience across the UK.

Our commitment to sport continued, with highlights including the Ashes, the Champions League and an increase in our coverage of Rugby Union.

An ongoing issue for the network is our presence on Medium Wave, and listening is declining as a result of poor reception in some parts of the UK. A key challenge, therefore, is to increase listening via digital platforms, where there is higher sound quality.

For the year ahead, Five Live will:

• Concentrate across the network on encouraging Medium Wave listeners to listen via digital platforms.

• Increase the amount of content being provided by our news teams around the UK and build a closer working relationship with the Asian Network, in an attempt to extend reach and broaden the range of stories covered.

• Maximise the use of the BBC’s sports rights by:
  
  – Providing uninterrupted coverage of every match from the FIFA World Cup along with increased analysis and reporting, on both analogue and digital platforms.
  
  – Collaborating with the new independent producer responsible for improving and extending coverage of Formula One motor racing.

We remain fully committed to our voluntary pledge that at least 10% of eligible hours on our national analogue radio networks will be made by independent producers.