23 May – As BBC staff stage a one-day strike over announced job cuts,
Terry Wogan crosses the
picket line to present his show.[1] Reportedly, he gives them a smile and wishes them all well. He explains on air that the reason for doing so is that he is contracted to host Wake up to Wogan and hence not directly employed by the BBC, and so cannot legally strike with their employees.
June
5–10 June –
BBC Radio 3 clears its airwaves for almost an entire week to broadcast the music of a single composer –
Ludwig van Beethoven.[2] This is followed up at the end of the year with ten days of non-stop
Johann Sebastian Bach which is broadcast in the run-up to Christmas.[3]
7 July –
7 July 2005 London bombings: Four terrorist suicide bombings strike London's public transport system during the morning rush hour (killing 56), receiving extensive media coverage. The BBC sticks with initial reports of a power surge on the London Underground until actual events can be corroborated.[5]
23 July – Les Ross takes over the Saturday breakfast show on BBC WM.
September – A year after
BBC Radio 2 stopped broadcasting a weekly edition of Pick of the Pops, the programme returns as a Sunday afternoon show.
8–12 September –
BBC Radio 5 Live devotes its daytime schedule to broadcast extensive live coverage of the deciding
Ashes cricket match.[7] Normally, the station provides reports into its regular programmes.
12 September
Radio Luxembourg returns to the airwaves after more than 12 years, now broadcasting via
Digital Radio Mondiale (DRM). During August of that year, the parent operating company of Radio Luxembourg conducted digital test broadcasts to the UK on 7145 kHz using DRM, as well as for a time at 7295 kHz DRM.
BBC Radio Norfolk switches on the West Runton transmitter, providing FM quality broadcasts of the station for North Norfolk, doing so as part of the station's 25th birthday celebrations. A month or so later, stereo FM broadcasts for West Norfolk begin on 104.4 MHz FM after more than 20 years of broadcasting in mono due to an off-air re-broadcast system which was unable to reproduce a clear noise free stereo signal.
October
13 October –
BBC Radio 1 hosts the first
John Peel Day, a year after John presented his final show for the station which was two weeks before his death.
^Wells, Matt (12 September 2005).
"Interview with Helen Boaden". The Guardian. London. Retrieved 23 April 2014. Some of our competitors talked immediately of 90 dead. They talked about three bus bombs. That was off a range of various wire services and it was complete speculation and we wouldn't go with that. We would be careful – we would try to check things out.