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I have no idea which figures are correct, but The Guardian have reported 'Not such good news for Ö÷²¥´óÐã Radio 5 Live, which was down 3.4% on the previous three months and down 6% year on year to 6.15 million'- completely different numbers!

If the controller is asking 'what is the right mix and what do people value most?' my personal view is far less 'personality' and far more 'information & analysis'.
My listening has drastically decreased with the increase in the personality lead presenters such as Richard Bacon and Colin Murray and their celebrity froth and the dwindling audience suggest I'm not the only one.
It's also interesting that the change in listening habits that has been attributed to the fall has not been reflected by the other Ö÷²¥´óÐã stations that have risen year-on-year.

Firstly, I don't really want to feel as though I am in ten places at once, all I want is a radio station that takes news and sport seriously and does not have so many juvenile and egotistical presenters.If I want comedy routines I will go out to the local Glee Club for the evening ! Good grief 5live is now the only news and sports national radio station since Talksport went all sports chat, you should be gaining listeners by the bucket load but you aren't because hardly anyone can quite work out who this station is supposed to be aimed at ? Seems to be all sport and no news as far as I can hear and the move to Salford as resulted in more Londoncentric coverage recently than ever and thus alienating the rest of the UK.Why not just have a separate news and sports station so we all know where we are ?

The alienation I feel when 'experts' are called in from Salford Uni, and Manchester Uni, despite the overwhelming ability of 'experts' in many other national Uni centres, infuriates me every time. It is national radio and the feeling that it has become Manchester local radio is very sad because the rest of the country, bar London, which has to be featured simply because politics and business have their centre there, is totally ignored. Let's forget the torch relay and the Olympics, which do not count. After all, your listeners must go up during this period as there is nowhere else apart from online and the tv for sports fans to go. But @1 and 2 are correct. Poor broadcasters with thin personalities are being allowed to demean your standing and as a national broadcaster you should be seeking the finest people to front your programmes, not those who glory in their own experiences and think they are more entertaining than the people they are interviewing. I wish AVK, that you would time how long it takes Murray to ask a question, and then how long he allows for an answer before beginning another uninterrupted monologue.

I know I bang on about the cost of the Salford move and the hypocrisy of those who wouldn't move in the end, although their staff were forced to go or lose their slots, but how can you honestly say that commuting up and down to Manchester and London, for presenters and guests, is at all financially worthwhile? I have read a few remarks by guests deploring the trip just for a short time on programmes. So is speaking remotely banned?

The quality of some of your support staff is poor, but I guess you had to fill the local Salford job quota. But people who do not know simple facts, read the news in a dirge, become irritating when they can't even pronounce words they are reading on the news.

What are you playing at as a NATIONAL iconic broadcaster???

For well over a year you have been losing audience quicker than the Voice, and yet nothing is done - the same presenters spouting the same tired schtick, the same tired formats...

This, the fourth of five quarterly drops, included unprecedented news and sporting opportunities:The recession, the NHS, bankers, Syria....Jubilee (hah!) Euros, half of Wimbeldon, the climax to the Premier league etc. and the audience was down!

In the private sector this would not be tolerated or allowed to continue, but this is not the real world. But rather one where over six million pounds a month is spent on lavish wages and failure is rewarded.

Post Olympics would be a good (belated) time to sort out the whole station. With the exception of one or two presenters there is no-one who can regularly attract and maintain an audience, and it is pitifully obvious that whole areas need a root and branch clear out. But, most likely, nothing will be done and after the jumping and throwing surge in numbers we will be here again with another set of excuses.

Yes what was I thinking of ? Come next quarter all we'll get is how wonderful everything is at 5live is.The main chummy clique of extremely well paid daily presenters will be told what a fabulous job they are all doing and of course the listeners will still be treated as though they have completely no intelligence whatsoever.Welcome to the fantasy world that is 5live broadcasting.

I would like the station to treat it's listeners as adults and cut the ridiculous, childish attitude they have. The text in with your 'cheese stories', 'what's your favourite soup'? need to go. The station has a remit to discuss news but when they do it's tabloid filler stuff. rarely more complex issues. The late night programme is dumbed down with giggling presenters and the 'comedy gang' in the background. Stephen Nolan is not much better, loving the sound of his own voice a little too much for my liking. I used to listen every night but now it is a rarity if I do bother to 'tune in'.

The morning phone ins are now light fluffy subjects that rely far too much on sports matters. Victoria Derbyshire covers too much trivia and tabloid stuff these days. I can't comment on the afternoon programmes because I don't listen then.
All I want is good news coverage with clear concise information and things that make you think not items and presenters that make you want to turn off.

I have never quite understood why there always seems to be somekind of reference to Talksport in these quarterly Rajar blogs as though that station is to be admired and aspired too.Since the last Rajar figures and Talksport has gone totally all sport, it has lost 10% of its listeners so it has become quite clear to most who take an interest in radio, that the ' quality ' of broadcasting at that particular radio station is definately NOT the direction in which 5live should being going in. Someone please take note.

Soon, in the next six months, someone who matters: TimDavie@Ö÷²¥´óÐã.co.uk or Entwistle (unlikely) will notice the station has been treading water for years.

It's as if you've rounded up the most unlikeable people you can find and stuck them in front of a mic and said, "Talk rubbish", especially about yourself or other frothy, twitter realated nonesense. Don't worry, we're chasing the entertainment news and rubbish that's on our namesake Channel five.

There is no in depthe news. Instead of hearing the head of SKY news on the Leveson enquiry, we heard Cheryl Cole's new single...blah, etc.

The station is so bad it is only the football that props it up. The non-exclusive FA cup rights as unexplained as the rajars and most of the news.

If it weren't funny, one would turn away. Carry on.

Some excellent observations here that I cannot better. Would simply observe that the main editorial from AVK acts to confirm what we listeners feel about the leadership in the Ö÷²¥´óÐã - living in a bubble detached from the outside world and sitting it out until (handsome) pension day.

@ msg 8 - I had forgotten about the dreadful music review. Thankfully.

..Mrs. Derbyshire, down wid da kids.

This comment was removed because the moderators found it broke the house rules. Explain.

i agree that the bbc employ too many studio based amateur presenters and confused, inept analysts - i for one do not want my licence fee going to overpaid "talent". I would rather it got invested in intelligent commentary and the red button technology - the best bit of bbc service this olympics has been the ability to by-pass futile studio chit chat and get to the sports action with good commentators and co-commentators.

I'm afraid Chris Warburton is a champion waffler; not on the case at all. Neither was Rachel today, I think they are all tired of having to keep on top of so much. Well done the Breakfast team in general though, and Tony Livesey's programmes are FANTASTIC!

'What do people value most?'
I value a news and sport channel that broadcasts news and sport using knowledgeable and coherent presenters. I want presenters who are interested in their guests, not in projecting themselves. I want a channel that assumes its listeners are intelligent and don't need everything explained in words of one syllable. I want a channel that doesn't follow the cult of celebrity, down-market mags and the lowest common denominator for everything.
I used to listen to Radio 5 all day while working. Now the only programmes I listen to are Danny Baker, Kermode & Mayo and Drive (occasionally). I moved to Radio 4 Extra a year or so ago and so have many others from the look of their figures.

How do Five Live do it? There dream team to guide us through a Saturday afternoon of Olympic Sport - Colin Murray and Chris Akabusi. I was only dipping in and out but couldn't understand a word from either.

Every time I walked past a radio that was on in the house I heard Colin!

Rachel and George are suffering from laryngitis. Thank goodness for the ones who have DONE what they are talking about on air.

Sounds like the ' Derbyshire Factor ' has come into play.All she does,most of the time, is read from a prepared script given to her before hand, so when she and other certain presenters get left without what the researchers have handed out to them, they finally get found out.Please can we have some new voices or more knowledgeable presenters on 5live to freshen it all up or are the present clique contracted to 5live for life ?

Binkie: the worry is they probably consider Murray and Bacon as 'the future'. You can imagine AVK agonising on how he can possibly create a daily slot for Murray. Heavan forbid!

You wonder if management ever undertake or listen to audience research - just pop around the relevant areas of the internet to gauge the anti-Murray comments - both on radio and tv. It's remarkable how anyone so unpopular can continue to be supported.

'We constantly think about the balance between commentary, information, analysis and personality in our sports output'

After listening to Akabusi screaming into the radio on Saturday afternoon, it's pretty clear where they think the balance should be. It reminded me of the original days of Radio Five when there were children's programmes during the day!

I know it's not specifically sport, but I'd love to know where the controller thinks the balance of commentary, information & analysis lies in an item like Richard Bacon's 'moan-in' because I couldn't hear any of them!

And finally, wouldn't it be nice to seem some sort of feedback from the station? The comments above are almost all completely constructive criticism about why people are listening less and it would be nice to hear reasons for the changes that have lead to a decline in listenership.

@ msg 20....You don't actually think that the station give a flying 4X what we think? We have lost our radio messageboards where we could comment on the programmes we were given. Some of of us have been saying for years that the station was being driven down hill and we have been arrogantly dismissed out of hand. I am not sure of the audience 5live is after anymore, Is it the younger audience with sops like the muisc review and the tabloid news and bands of giggling presenters? It certainly doesn't seem to want to appeal to an older audience with an interest in REAL current affairs not tabloid trivia.

It was a good time to bury bad news and to label the blog "Amidst the Olympic medal count" shows just how very arrogant things are at the top of the station. Sorry it is not good enough, as zelds says, to rob anyone of the chance to feed back what they think. Some people will love, some will loathe, but being given the equivalent of Feedback is necessary because otherwise we have texts being selected by the drones. I was on a Livesey phone in and the chap who did the call "what I said to your researcher...) sounded like a Terry Christian clone who persistently said 'yeah' as I was talking.

AVK just give us a feed back blog and let yourself face your paymasters. You are on a massive salary and paid to keep us listeners engaged. You will note most of the people who post go way back on the station, to the perfect days of Inverdale, the great Vincent Hanna, Fi Glover, Chiles in his pomp, Nick Robinson, I could go on. It shows we still love it, we are hanging on in there, for all its faults and the people we avoid on air...................

"I believe our coverage of London 2012 is showcasing so many of radio's strengths - intimacy, intensity, immediacy and above all its ability to make you feel you are in ten places at once. Those are the things we want to build on in all of our output over the coming years." says Adrian Van Klaveren.

The old adage springs to mind: Quality is more important than quantity.

After the very selective reading of texts and tweets praising the station; after the tears and atmosphere - that apparently can only be appreciated by being there; after Murray and the rest have finished talking for the sake of it; after all the presenters have headed for the cultural delights of Orlando or Vegas for an all-inclusive; we will be left with the same Daily Mail cribbed stories and Bacon at the Edinburgh festival, yet again.

I will add one comment about the Olympic coverage to add to my general comments about the station above.

Most of it is crass ... but I would like to say that I think Alan Green's rowing commentary was outstanding. I will no longer listen to him commentating on football as he irritates me too much but, with rowing, he displays an unexpected love and knowledge of the sport and surprising emotion at our successes. Despite having no interest in the sport, I've listened to the rowing at the last two Olympics solely for his coverage because he makes it interesting.

Re the last paragraph of @3:

Last night the same person said Tuxon for Tucson.

As usual, no new blog for a week although 'they' can all find time to tweet constantly.

AVK, can we have a Feedback blog please?

Meanwhile they will all be off on leave according to their twitter conversations, and then this blog will shut and there will be nowhere to say anything.