Emma Barnett will present a new morning show on Radio 5 Live, the first woman to have a solo daily slot since the departure of Shelagh Fogarty and Victoria Derbyshire two years ago, in a new-look schedule that also reunites Jane Garvey with Peter Allen.
Barnett, who currently presents a Sunday evening show, will present 5 Live’s morning slot three days a week, from Wednesday to Friday.
She takes over from Allen, who had a short-lived stint in the morning slot and moves to a new Sunday evening programme that will see the return of Woman’s Hour presenter Garvey to 5 Live.
The pair spent 13 years presenting together on the station, first on breakfast and later on drivetime, and have been described as a “radio marriage made in heaven”, winning four Sony gold radio awards.
Garvey was the first voice heard on 5 Live, leaving in 2007 to front Woman’s Hour. Their new Sunday evening show promises a “typically wry and witty look at the week’s news”.
She said: “Working with Peter for 5 live’s 20th anniversary reminded me of how annoying he is. And it brought home how much I’d missed working on the station I’ve never stopped listening to.”
Allen added: “I did rather fancy the idea of joining her on Woman’s Hour. I am sure I could have helped but the management seem curiously reluctant to accept that.”
Adrian Chiles will continue to present the morning show on Mondays and Tuesdays.
The changes, announced on Wednesday, are the biggest shake-up to the schedule since September 2014, when Fogarty and Derbyshire chose to leave the station along with another of its long-serving presenters, Richard Bacon.
Their departures led to a drop in listeners for the news and sports station, falling to as low as 5.3 million last summer.
The new daytime line-up, which was criticised for its lack of women, included Chiles, Football Focus presenter Dan Walker and former Sunday Sport editor Tony Livesey as part of a new drivetime presenting team.
But the station has since appeared to recover, and in the most recent official Rajar listening figures, for the first three months of this year, it was up to 5.8 million.
Walker, the new presenter of BBC1’s Breakfast, will be replaced in the afternoon by Asian Network presenter and former Radio 1 DJ, Nihal Arthanayake, who will co-host with Sarah Brett.
Barnett, who joined 5 Live in 2014, said she wanted her programme to be “a place where people share strong views and have conversations that would normally happen in private”.
Like the rest of the BBC, 5 Live faces the prospect of further cuts to its output, with one plan believed to have been mooted was a merger of some of its output with BBC local radio, which has seen its audience drop and also faces have to make cost-savings.
However, any such proposals would also be problematic for both 5 Live and local radio.
