bbc radio
BBC Radio 6 Music announced a raft of changes to its morning lineup on Thursday (Jan. 9).
Beginning in February, Nick Grimshaw will take on the weekday breakfast slot permanently. Previous host Lauren Laverne will move back to a later mid-morning slot when she returns to the air following her recovery after a cancer diagnosis. Esteemed DJ Mary Anne Hobbs, who has been broadcasting on the BBC since 1996, will take a sabbatical and vacate the slot that Laverne will now host.
In August 2024, Laverne announced that she had been diagnosed with cancer “unexpectedly during a screening test” and would take a step back from the show. She has not specified the type of cancer she has been diagnosed with, but said that the treatment she received last year had been “successful” and that she would gradually return to broadcasting in 2025.
Laverne hosted the show from 2019 and also presents BBC’s Desert Island Discs, taking over the long-running franchise from Kirsty Young. In a statement, Laverne discussed the decision to leave the breakfast slot: “As listeners will know, I had a really tough 2024 and worried at times that I wouldn’t be able to return to the station I love so much.”
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She added: “During my recovery I learned all over again about the power of music, the people you surround yourself with and the emotional support and joy radio can provide. I’m so grateful to be able to get back to doing what I love and sharing those things with our brilliant listeners every day.”
Grimshaw, who previously hosted Radio 1’s daily breakfast show between 2012 and 2018, took on the slot following Laverne’s diagnosis. He will host the show on weekdays from February and said in a statement that, “I’m honestly honored to be asked to work there and can’t wait to continue supplying the best new music from the world’s most interesting artists.” He also hosts BBC’s Sidetracked podcast alongside fellow Radio 1 alumni Annie Mac, which delves into the week’s biggest music happenings.
Hobbs, meanwhile, will leave her slot from mid-morning to lunchtime on weekdays and return to the station with a new show later in spring. “My agenda has been to change daytime radio at BBC 6 Music,” she said in a statement. “It was David Bowie who taught me that creative life is progression. Once the work is complete.. stand at the edge of everything you know and ask a different question.”
In December the station announced that their annual 6 Music Festival will take place in Manchester between March 26-29; a lineup is yet to be announced. The station currently hosts show by musicians like Iggy Pop and Elbow’s Guy Garvey on a weekly basis.
It’s been six years since the #MeToo movement exploded into the mainstream consciousness, and Ellie Goulding believes that the reckoning has changed the music industry for the better. In a new interview with BBC Radio 4’s Today show, the “Love Me Like You Do” singer recounted the evolution of her experiences in the music industry post-#MeToo.
“I definitely think the landscape has changed a bit, especially since the [#MeToo] movement,” Goulding said. “I think that was really, really important for people to keep speaking out about their individual stories, because I know a lot was happening and just wasn’t being talked about.”
Activist Tarana Burke first coined the phrase “Me Too” in the context of raising awareness against sexual violence and rape culture in 2006. The phrase grew into a culture-shifting social movement by 2017 when several sexual abuse allegations were levied against disgraced film producer Harvey Weinstein.
Those Weinstein allegations became a catalyst for more people to feel comfortable coming forward and sharing their stories. In the interview, Goulding recounted an experience that she had “sort of normalized.”
“You know, when you go into a studio and afterwards the producer asks if you want to go for a drink. And I’m quite a polite person, I don’t like letting people down. I don’t like disappointing people. So I was like, ‘Yeah, sure, absolutely, go for a drink,’” she explained. “And then it sort of somehow becomes like a romantic thing when it shouldn’t. You don’t want it to be a romantic thing, but it’s like there was always a slight feeling of discomfort when you walked into a studio and it was just one or two men writing or producing.”
For Goulding, “hearing so many other, similar stories from other female musicians and singers” helped her realize that those experiences — which she described as a “kind of currency” — were not to be normalized. “I [realized] that I wasn’t alone in it at all. It wasn’t just me, being particularly friendly.”
“It was like a sort of unspoken thing where if you’re working with male producers, that was almost like an expectation, which sounds mad for me to say out loud, and it definitely wouldn’t happen now. I mean, very rarely, because things have just really changed,” she said. “Younger artists at Polydor, my record label, will now have chaperones when they go to the studio. And they also have a chance to speak to a [counselor] or speak to someone about their experience as an up-and-coming musician.”
The “Lights” singer’s recent sentiments echo a 2020 Independent interview where she said, “I feel really stupid for saying I wasn’t affected by the #MeToo movement… I [normalized] too much and I am sad about that.”
Goulding is entering the new year with her second career Grammy nomination — best pop dance recording for “Miracle” (with Calvin Harris). In 2023, she earned her sixth career entry on the Billboard 200 with Higher Than Heaven (No. 125), which also hit No. 1 on the U.K. Albums chart.
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