21 February –
BBC Radio 4 launches a new weekday afternoon magazine show Anderson Country, presented by
Gerry Anderson. The programme proves divisive amongst the station's listenership and is replaced after a year by The Afternoon Shift.
18 March –
BBC Radio Kent stops broadcasting on 1035 kHz MW. The frequency is reallocated to commercial radio to allow a new London-wide station to start broadcasting.
27 March – The original
BBC Radio 5 signs off after three and a half years on air.
28 March –
BBC Radio 5 Live launches at 5am, with the educational and children's elements of Radio 5's programming replaced by rolling news.
Jane Garvey is the first voice on air. At 2am the following morning 5 Live broadcasts the first edition of its overnight Up All Night show.
The first edition of Classic Gardening Forum is broadcast on
Classic FM. The programme launches following the transfer of the production of
BBC Radio 4's long-running gardening programme Gardeners' Question Time to an independent company upon which the entire previous panel is dismissed. They consequently move to
Classic FM on a short-term contract to present Classic Gardening Forum, which runs for 60 minutes as a mixture of gardening tips and music.
3 April – The closure of
BBC Radio 5 sees children's programmes return to Radio 4. However, instead of daily programmes, just one weekly 30-minute programme is broadcast, airing on Sunday evenings.[3]
10 April – Radio 5's closure sees adult education and
Open University programmes return to Radio 4. They are broadcast on long wave only as a two-hour block on Sunday evenings. Open University programmes are broadcast between February and September with language courses aired from October until January.
8 May – (Sunday) In the early hours,
Annie Nightingale launches her career as a club music DJ, presenting the first edition of The Chill Out Zone on
BBC Radio 1.
June
June –
BBC Radio 1 begins broadcasting announcements on its medium wave frequency voiced by
Nicky Campbell telling listeners to retune to FM because it will no longer be broadcasting on medium wave from 1 July.[4]
29 June – The Radio Authority receives 41 applications for six
London-wide licenses.[5]
June – Following the purchase of Cambridge station CNFM by
GWR, the station is relaunched as
Q103.
June – The name Victory, as a radio station for the Portsmouth area, is re-invented eight years after
Radio Victory had stopped broadcasting. The name is resurrected to broadcast a 28-day Restricted Service Licence (RSL) to mark the city's 800th birthday and the 50th anniversary of
D-Day. The station returns for a second RSL over the Christmas period of 1994 and again in 1995 to mark
VE Day's 50th anniversary.
15 July –
BFBS ceases broadcasts in
Berlin following the end of the
Cold War,
German reunification, and the withdrawal of British forces from the city, after 33 years.[7]
1–16 September – The UK's first five regional commercial stations start broadcasting.
October
5 October –
News Direct 97.3FM and London News Talk 1152AM begin broadcasting. They replace LBC Newstalk and London Talkback Radio. The change occurs following last year's decision by the
Radio Authority not to renew
LBC's licence, instead giving it to London News Radio, a consortium led by former LBC staff and backed by
Guinness Mahon[8] which has subsequently bought out the LBC business.[9]
8 October –
Virgin 1215 is awarded one of the new FM licences advertised in London.[10] The station applied for a London licence after attempts to persuade authorities to allow it to broadcast nationally on FM[11][12] had failed. The other three newly licensed stations are
Heart 106.2,
Premier Christian Radio and
Viva 963.