This article's lead sectionmay be too short to adequately summarize the key points. Please consider expanding the lead to provide an accessible overview of all important aspects of the article.(January 2010)
The station was launched on 11 March 2002 at 2pm as the UK's first national commercial radio station dedicated 100% to sport, providing entertaining and informative coverage of all UK football, rugby, racing, cricket and all major sporting events. TEAMtalk 252 also provided a number of specialist programmes dedicated to racing, cricket, motor racing, non-league football, business, rugby league, US sports and live coverage of the British Basketball League.[2]
TEAMtalk 252 launched with the help of former England International Teddy Sheringham and Footballers' Wives star Zöe Lucker, who played Tanya Turner, and although it had 19 studios and employed 100 full-time sports journalists, the newcomer made no attempt to muscle into the patch already covered by BBC Radio 5 Live and Talksport. Both stations had already spent millions on buying broadcast rights for live sports commentaries, but TEAMtalk 252 said it would concentrate on news, analysis and opinion in addition to their Saturday night British Basketball League coverage.
The station's biggest names included former England International Phil Neal, Jamie Broadbent who was part of Chris Evans' Virgin Radio Breakfast Show and broadcasting personality James H. Reeve.[3] John Meek, George Riley, Jonathan Doidge, Adam Pope, Neil Henderson, John Newcombe, Simon Barlow, Tim Thornton and Al Bentley were all part of TEAMtalk 252's launch schedule.
Speaking about its launch, TEAMtalk Media Group sports director Ian Holding said: "Sports fans will come to know TEAMtalk 252 as the only station where they can tune in and guarantee to find sport. We have a great team in place and an enviable number of sports journalists who will enable us to deliver the broadest sports coverage possible."[4]
Programming
TEAMtalk 252's programming consisted of sports talk, sports phone-ins, discussions and specialist programming 24 hours a day.
The day began with the morning's sports news, debate and reaction on The Full Sports Breakfast with Jon Meek and George Riley, before the baton was passed to Jamie Broadbent and Adam Pope on It's Your Shout, who took an in-depth look at the day's sports stories and invited listeners to have their say, before James H. Reeve hosted an afternoon sports talk show with live horse racing and interviews. Neil Henderson and Jon Newcombe rounded-up the day's sports news on Drive including all the latest stories from around the United Kingdom with their team of reporters.[2]
Sportsnight, hosted by Simon Barlow and Tim Thornton then guided listeners through the evening's sporting action, before handing over to the late night team on The Final Whistle with Al Bentley and Terry 'fatty' McGeadie, the station's nightly sports phone-in. Up For It with Gavin Hamilton, Nolan Kane and Mike Cunliffe was broadcast throughout the night.
On Saturday and Sunday, TEAMtalk 252 had full coverage of the weekend's sport with the latest news and scores from the ground on 252 Matchday, and also specialist programming including The Stable Breakfast, a show dedicated to horse racing, League Talk, presented by Jonathan Doidge and the only national radio sports show dedicated to rugby league, The Non League Show with Brendan Fatchett and The Business of Sport.
TEAMtalk 252 had a roster of regular presenters, which included: Adam Pope, Al Bentley, Brendan Fatchett, Jonathan Doidge, Nick Millard, Gavin Hamilton, George Riley, James H. Reeve, Jamie Broadbent, Jason Thornton, Jon Meek, Jon Newcombe, Mike Cunliffe, Neil Henderson, Nick "Bomber" Harris, Nolan Kane, Phil Neal, Simon Barlow, Seth Bennett, Terry 'fatty' McGeadie, John Hunt and Tim Thornton.
Audience
TEAMtalk 252's first and only set of RAJAR audience figures showed the station had 428,000 listeners a week in the first quarter of 2002. Its Irish audience figures were never measured. For the same period, rivals Talksport increased its overall weekly audience to 2.47 million, while BBC Radio 5 Live had 6.4 million listeners.[5] Audience figures for TEAMtalk 252 were not helped by its poor signal in London and the south east of England.[6]
Demise
TEAMtalk had a reported £28 million in the bank and allocated £8m to TEAMtalk 252 stating it needed to break even by 2004, but that it didn't have enough money to bid for major exclusive sporting rights.
Instead the station set about quickly growing its audience around sports news, discussion shows and creative programming, but the divided TEAMtalk board was under pressure in the post tech-stock era and the costs of operating the channel became more difficult to reconcile, despite its increasing popularity and use of originated content across other channels.
As a result of disagreements over the company's direction, TEAMtalk's group chairman Bill Wilson stepped down in April and by mid-May 2002. TEAMtalk 252's owners confirmed that it was in discussions with a number of parties who had expressed an interest in buying either part of or all off the TEAMtalk group. It had, a week previously, been approached by online betting business ukbetting plc with an offer of £10.2m for lock, stock and barrel— this was rejected by the TEAMtalk management. In April 2002, £9.5m was written off by TEAMtalk which admitted it had over-stretched itself financially. By the end of May 2002, TEAMtalk 252's future was thrown firmly into doubt when a deal was done between the parent company TEAMtalk and previous group bidder ukbetting to take over TEAMtalk for £13.7m.[7]
ukbetting appeared to be mainly interested in TEAMtalk's other sporting services including internet site TEAMtalk.com; at that time ukbetting's portfolio of websites included sports sites sportinglife.com, sportal.com and bettingzone.co.uk, as well as betting sites totalbet.com and ukbetting.com. Subsequent takeovers have added Oddschecker.co.uk, Rivals.net, Football365, Golf365, Cricket365, Planet-Rugby and Planet-F1 among others to the stable.
TEAMtalk 252 closed suddenly on 31 July 2002. Staff were informed at a meeting held that morning that the station would close between 12:00 and 14:00 that day. The station ended broadcasting at 13:42 as presenter James H Reeve said, "My dad always said don't start something you can't finish, and he'd be proud of me now." It is reported that it was cut mid-sentence.
Legacy: Streaming audio & FM
teamtalk.com subsequently established a business of providing streaming audio commentary services to sporting businesses, notably betting shops such as Ladbrokes,[8]Coral[9] and Paddy Power.[10]
TEAMtalk also provide broadcast services for live Restricted Service Licence FM stations at sporting venues, including for the Cheltenham Gold Cup.[11] As with most other RSL stations, these operate for a strictly limited number of days on strictly limited power, typically allowing reception only within a couple of miles (kilometres) of the venue. The RSL stations are also broadcast over the internet.[12]
Related Research Articles
BBC Radio 5 Live is a British national radio station owned and operated by the BBC. It broadcasts mainly news, sport, discussion, interviews and phone-ins. It is the principal BBC radio station covering sport in the United Kingdom, broadcasting virtually all major sports events staged in the UK or involving British competitors.
BBC Radio 5 Sports Extra is a national digital radio station in the United Kingdom, operated by the BBC, and specialising in extended live sports coverage. It is a sister station to BBC Radio 5 Live and shares facilities, presenters and management, and is a department of the BBC North Group division.
Talksport, owned by Wireless Group, is a sports radio station in the United Kingdom and Republic of Ireland. The station was originally launched as Talk Radio UK in 1995.
Radio Sport was a New Zealand sports radio network and the talkback sister network of Newstalk ZB. It held commentary rights for most cricket matches, international and domestic rugby union games, NRL rugby league games, trans-Tasman basketball and New Zealand tennis tournaments.
Clyde 1 is an Independent Local Radio station based in Glasgow, Scotland, owned and operated by Bauer as part of the Hits Radio network. It broadcasts to Glasgow and West Central Scotland.
Atlantic 252 was an Irish longwave radio station broadcasting to Ireland and the United Kingdom on 252 kHz from its 1988 purpose-built transmission site at Clarkstown radio transmitter, County Meath, which provided service to Atlantic 252 from 1989 until 2002. The station's studios were located 12 km (7 mi) away in Mornington House, Summerhill Road, Trim, County Meath. Atlantic 252 also had sales offices and studios at 74 Newman Street in London.
Colin Murray is a Northern Irish radio and television presenter. In 2010, he became host of BBC Television's Match of the Day 2 on BBC Two, while still anchoring shows on BBC Radio 5 Live, including 5 Live Sport and Fighting Talk and was still presenting on BBC Radio Ulster. He has previously hosted regular Channel 5 television and BBC Radio 1 shows. In 2007, he was named 'Music Broadcaster of the Year' at the Sony Radio Academy Awards.
Alan Bernard Brazil is a Scottish broadcaster and former footballer who played as a forward. He most notably played for Ipswich Town, Tottenham Hotspur and Manchester United, and represented Scotland in international football. He was forced to retire due to a recurring back injury, and then moved into media presentation. He initially worked on television, before moving over to radio where he has for many years been a presenter on Talksport.
1116 SEN is an Australian radio station in Victoria, Australia. Owned and operated by Sports Entertainment Group, it broadcasts a sports radio format. It commenced broadcasting on 29 November 1931 as 3AK, the station currently broadcasts from studios in South Melbourne.
James Hengist Reeve, born 25 June 1950, is an English broadcaster, journalist, raconteur and radio phone-in host. Reeve has hosted shows on Piccadilly Radio, BBC GMR, BBC Radio 5 Live, The New Hallam FM, talkSPORT, TEAMtalk 252 stations and, up until July 2006, presented the late night phone-in show at Key 103.
Radio City Talk was an Independent Local Radio station in Liverpool, England.
365 Media Group is a now dormant sports media company that once employed over 100 people in Leeds, England and Cape Town, South Africa.
RadioTAB is a radio station primarily covering horse and greyhound racing in Australia and internationally, operated by Tabcorp, which operates the Totalisator Agency Boards based in Queensland, Tasmania, South Australia and Northern Territory. RadioTAB's studios are in Brisbane City.
Jim Proudfoot is an English football commentator who has worked on national radio and television since the late 1990s.
RTÉ Sport is a department of Irish public broadcaster RTÉ. The department provides sporting coverage through a number of platforms including RTÉ Radio, RTÉ Television, RTÉ.ie, RTÉ Player Sport and RTÉ Mobile. RTÉ holds the television and radio broadcasting rights in the Republic of Ireland to several sports, broadcasting the sport live or alongside flagship analysis programmes such as The Sunday Game, Thank GAA It's Friday, Soccer Republic and RTÉ Racing on RTÉ Television, and Game On, Saturday Sport, and Sunday Sport on RTÉ Radio.
In the United Kingdom, sporting events are broadcast on several national television networks, as well as radio. Many of the sporting events are listed online or in different kind of apps. These apps are mainly designed by sport fans who want to have an easy way to find when a certain game or match is played, as well as when a race starts or which channel is broadcasting the olympic games etc.
This is a list of events in British radio during 2002.
Georgie Bingham is a British radio and television presenter, formerly a host of the Weekend Sports Breakfast on talkSPORT.
OTB Sports is an Irish media company, comprising a podcast network, website, daily radio show on nationwide broadcaster Newstalk 106-108fm and web-based live digital broadcast. It is on air seven days a week.
Macquarie Sports Radio was a short-lived Australian commercial radio network broadcasting to Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane and Perth. Owned and operated by Macquarie Media, the network launched on 4 April 2018, replacing Talking Lifestyle. Following the acquisition of Macquarie Media by Nine Entertainment Co., programs outside of live sports commentary were suspended in October 2019, and on 1 February 2020 the network ultimately ceased broadcasting.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
