Real Radio has announced it is to axe more regional shows with the news that its mid-morning and afternoon slots will be covered by networked shows from Monday 5 November.
The news follows July’s decision to remove its popular football phone-in show and replace it with a “music programming mixed with travel, news, and weather, key to the drivetime audience.”
Darren Parks and Debbie Mac will now host the 10am-1pm and 1pm-4pm shows respectively. Darren, known as ‘Parksy’ has covered the mid-morning show on Real North West in recent years while Debbie will continue to host weekday afternoons in the North West alongside the rest of the network.
Peak breakfast and drivetime shows will continue to be hosted locally during the week, whilst at weekends each station will retain a locally produced late breakfast show and move to networked programming for the rest of the day.
Andy Carter, managing director of Real and Smooth Limited Group, commented: “Advances in technology mean we know we can produce high quality programming which is relevant to the lives of our audience and maintain the local content that is important to them, such as news, travel and weather.
“Our recent experience with Smooth shows that you can grow audience by providing high quality content from a single source.”