If you didn't wait until about 13:10 today to have your lunch and tune into 5 Live while you were eating your lunch, you really did miss out.

A mother was being interviewed by Sarah Brett about an art project she joined after her son was stabbed to death. It seemed essential, even though she was obviously struggling, that she told us all the graphic details of the murder that she saw on CCTV, from the moment the knife struck her son, to the child walking with her dad in the background.

5 Live is essential lunch time listening.

I refuse to listen to Afternoon Edition or whatever it is called and am boycotting the station at that time whilst Nihal is a presenter.

Infact I tend to listen to 5Live less and less these days, as I am not that keen on their sports coverage either.

Afternoon Edition is the only show on Five Live I will actively turn off. Just not a fan of magazine style shows.

If I'm having one my sleepless nights, I'll go through Phil Williams, Up All Night, Morning Reports, Wake Up To Money, Breakfast, Your Call and the late morning show, then AE comes on and I go do something else.

But the question was why don't they use 5 Live Sports Extra? It's sitting there churning out its info loop ad nauseam. Surely it requires only the flick of a switch and then everyone could be accommodated. Silly to have capacity sitting there, paid for but unused.

If you have a Digital radio or are in a situation to listen to one..

Jenni Barnett's wednesday politics based programme is the best weekday show on the station.

I'll have to tune in to hear Emma then.

Sports Extra is in fact quite limited by its service licence:
"All output should be live sports coverage"
Full link here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/bbctrust/our_wo...ive_extra.html

Highly irritated by that frequently-repeated trailer for Allen and Garvey. I just can't understand why people rate these two - for me they epitomise lazy broadcasting. He with the world-weary tone and faux hapless male disposition and her, supercilious and arrogant. He is being paid just to drone on, on auto-pilot and she as the personification of what's wrong with feminism. Wonder why we never see her on TV?

I guess that the approval they do enjoy stems from comparison with so many of the other Five Live presenters who are even worse, e.g. Nolan, Dotun Whateverhisnameis, Murray and Campbell.

GREAT POST......................................she does little or nothing to hide her anti male stance.....maybe still bearing scares from her x husband. who knows.....................

It was a very flat effort on sunday night. Hope it improves but I'm not holding my breath. It was a sparky twosome at breakfast 20 years ago, just sounded stale sunday.

Cannot understand the timeslot they have been given as its as far removed from their other shows as humanly possible. Maybe if the controller wanted the spark to reignite the Friday drive show may have been better.........

What was FiveLive doing yesterday with the Chancellor's Autumn Statement? They kept interrupting it for news which could have been given afterwards. This meant that something that was being claimed as live was a few minutes behind elsewhere. Very poor.

The Jo Cox story is very sad but the verdict could have waited for 30 minutes or so.

This is a prime example of Radio 5 Live not being able to do right for doing wrong. If they had stayed exclusively with the Autumn Statement and ignored the Jo Cox verdict, people would have had a go at them. Sadly, difficult decisions have to be made when 2 big stories happen at the same time, and someone will be unhappy whatever they do.

When I heard that the verdict was imminent, I wanted to know what that verdict would be and to hear reaction. I think most people outside the political and financial sectors would also have been more interested in that verdict than the Autumn Statement.

I think people would have wanted to hear the verdict.

Sadly, indeed very sadly, the events in this story had happened and a delay until the end of the speech would not have altered the coverage. Whilst I appreciated the coverage and, thought it right and proper to devote extensive airtime to the Jo Cox story, many of the contributors were only repeating what they had already said at the dreadful time of her killing. What was new was the killer's back story and that could have waited..

Meanwhile, mapping out the nation's future was taking place in the House of Commons and, only for the duration of that speech, Five Live should have been there. And in fairness, they were there for most of it.

As the earlier post said, Five Live are damned if they do and damned if they don't. For me, once the verdict was known, the coverage should be at the HOC until the end of the Chancellor's speech.

So why can news of a verdict be delayed but the broadcasting of an Autumn Statement must be absolutely live?

After the Autumn Statement or any other major political statement, the politicians they invite on generally just repeat the party line so that doesn't really add anything. If they debate it a few days later or refer to it in a few months they may - like those commenting on the murder of Jo Cox - be repeating what they said at the time.

A question about poor reception: is there anyone else here who listens to 5 Live on MW (693khz) in Tyne & Wear and surrounding areas? If so are you experiencing poor reception on 5 Live? For the past few weeks the quality of the reception has been atrocious. I'm probably not explaining this very well but it's like I can never properly tune in to the station. The sound seems distorted and hissy (especially when the person speaking says a word that contains the letter S). It's like tuning in to a station but it being ever so slightly "off" the correct frequency. There's also no "depth" to the sound.

The transmitter for 5 Live is based in Stagshaw, Northumberland. I wonder if it is operating on reduced power or is there something else that could be causing this? I did think it might be my portable radio but other stations on MW are clear and the quality of the sound has some depth. All these other stations broadcast from different transmitters though (Wrekenton and Greenside, both in Gateshead which is just up the road from me). Stagshaw seems to be used purely for 5 Live.

The end result is I can barely listen to 5 Live any longer, the distortion and poor quality sound make listening for more than a few minutes impossible and I keep wanting to try and "fine tune" my radio! The portable is a Sony (ICF-522) which I have had for a few years
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Sony-ICFS22.../dp/B0007YQNSW

Working on Woman's Hour would make it worse ! Also when they interviewed her when Peter left weekday radio, she called him an Old Fart. Can you imagine the comments if Peter had called her a similar name ? !

He would only have needed to change one letter...

A Radio Times interview with Peter & Jane about their new Sunday evening programme .

http://www.radiotimes.com/news/2016-...new-radio-show

Remember when this was a great station........

The only National/Local radio station ever created, the afternoon show is terrible, really bad. I can only assume this is what happens when jobs are given to people not based on their talent or experience but on BBC PC box ticking.

This is local radio at it's worst and hospital radio at it's best..........Truly awful.

BBC 5 Live gone from a Rolls Royce to a sick badly ridden rusty bicycle with punctures.

Just an ex listener that does not want to be...............

Half the trouble is them moving to Salford ! Along with successive station controllers dumbing programmes down .

I agree that people aren't recruited based on talent. Not only is this apparent in interviews, but also when items are being read. Even the basics like knowing when to pause in the middle of a sentences. It isn't just one presenter or one show.

I'm still waiting for Nihal to get through an interview with a fellow football fan without having to mention Spurs.