FBC Radio 5

FBC Radio 5 was Flarland's first all-news radio station, operated between 1990 and 2017 by the Flarlandian Broadcasting Corporation. The crisis at the corporation led to FBC Radio 5 being shut down over a cost-cutting measure and its format moved to FBC Radio 1.

History

FBC Radio 5 was set up following a reordering of the national FM radio band and the shut down of 34 pirate radio stations in early 1989, as part of a revision of the FBC's radio operations. The FBC planned the creation of two new networks, Radio 5 being an all-new service, and the planned Radio 6 being a network of local stations. However the FBC realized that launching a local radio network would easily damage existing local radio stations - either the IBC-owned radio stations of a provincial level or the independently-run stations, and priorities were taken for the launch of a national, all-news service.

Radio 5 launched on the same day as Network Three, September 17, 1990, at 6am. It was the first FBC radio station to go 24/7 from launch, and the fourth FBC network to do so - FBC Radio 3 started 24/7 broadcasting in 1979, followed by Radio 2 in 1985 and Radio 1 in 1989. Radio 4 still continues closing down. The format during its first few years on air consisted largely of news and current affairs programming, but due to another change to the format, the FBC transferred selected sports coverage to Radio 5. This eventually led to Radio 1 and Radio 4 carrying specialist sports like the occasional Sierran football or Hopelandian gridiron. In 1995, it received special attention from Channel A to jointly simulcast the coverage of the O.J. Simpson trial that Channel A broadcast exclusively to Flarland, due to lack of resources by the existing broadcasters. Radio National reportedly joined Radio 5 in time.

The 1996 changes at the FBC's structure also affected Radio 5. High-priority sporting events were transferred to Radio 1 while specialist sports were moved to Radio 5. A new show, 5 at 5, was a five-minute recap of the day's headlines at 5pm, followed by a sports phone-in show, 5:05 (based on the Nashlandian 5-0-5, in fact the name had similar pronounciation). At 7pm it relayed Radio 4's Evening Program, whose first hour was mainly dedicated to hard-hitting news, and even at one point relayed Panorama live. In 1998, 5 at 5 and 5:05 were dropped and replaced by a combined show known as 5 Sharp, with the phone-in aspect being more about the news of the day rather than being a dedicated sports program (the FBC managed to make a similar program later to serve such a purpose).

Shutdown

Plans to close Radio 5 were announced as early as 2012, where the FBC threatened to shut down Radio 4, Radio 5 and a handful of web services - merging Radio 5 into Radio 1 and Radio 4 into Radio 2. These measures were widely cried out by many of the policy makers of the time, but the FBC said that "non-essential radio and television services will collapse and the FBC will look for an efficient structure". Plans for the shutdown of both services were later shelved, but the FBC would eventually shut down Radio 5 "in due course", saying that Radio 1 and Radio 4 had similar programming, and that Radio 1 reformatted as an all-news station, with Radio 5's extant sports programming, would save the corporation millions of dollars. In 2016, the government gave two years for the FBC to shut Radio 5 down. A compromise was reached with University of Wembley Broadcasting to turn one of their DAB/web services, RN News, into a traditional radio station, using Radio 5's network of transmitters. A date was set for the shutdown, November 30, 2017, with RN News not starting until 6am the following day.