How Radio 5 Live transformed the airwaves

It’s amazing to think that it’s 20 years since the launch of Radio 5 Live. But it was bright and early on the morning of 28 March 1994 (long before Princess Diana’s death, 9/11, the Iraq war, the London bombs, the Asian tsunami, the ‘Arab spring’) that Jane Garvey announced, ‘Welcome to a new network.’ Not an impersonal statement, ‘This is Radio 5 Live’, as you might have expected from the BBC. But an inviting ‘Welcome’. Come in. Join us. We want to hear from you, just as much as you are going to hear from us.

Interaction was what gave the station its USP, its distinctive character. Yet this was more than a decade before Twitter, Tumblr, Buzzfeed really took off. Mobile phones were still big, awkward, boxy things to use, with no internet access and no keyboard; iPads and tablets were off the radar.