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For the New Zealand musician see Matthew Bannister (musician)
Richard Matthew Bannister (born
March 16 1957) is a
British radio administrator and broadcaster. After attending
King Edward VII School (Sheffield), he graduated in law at the
University of Nottingham in
1978, and joined
BBC Radio Nottingham as a Station Assistant and subsequently the presenter of its speech-based breakfast show,
Morning Report. It was here that he first met
Trevor Dann, whom he subsequently worked with at
BBC Radio 1.
He first worked for Radio 1 as a presenter of its news programme
Newsbeat between 1983 and 1986 and subsequently as co-presenter with
Anna Raeburn of
Capital Radio's
The Way It Is. He first established himself as a 'name' in the radio industry in the late
1980s and early
1990s as controller of GLR (
Greater London Radio), the BBC's local radio station for
London. Here he worked for the first time with
Chris Evans, who was pioneering many of the ideas which would later win him greater success and much controversy at Radio 1, and also employed a number of the more musically credible
DJs from Radio 1's past, such as
Annie Nightingale,
Tommy Vance,
Janice Long and
Johnnie Walker.
In 1993 Bannister was chosen as the new controller for BBC Radio 1, replacing
Johnny Beerling who had worked at the station since its inception in 1967 . The station was hugely popular, but some of its DJs, producers and other staff had been working there for many years, and it was felt that younger listeners were not being sufficiently catered for. Between 1993 and 1995 many older DJs departed, including
Dave Lee Travis,
Simon Bates,
Alan Freeman,
Bob Harris,
Adrian Juste,
Johnnie Walker,
Steve Wright,
Gary Davies and
Bruno Brookes. Although audiences declined dramatically, a new wave of DJs, including specialists such as
Steve Lamacq (indie rock),
Tim Westwood (hip-hop),
Chris Goldfinger (ragga/dancehall) and
Trevor Nelson (R&B), emerged and became highly popular with a new generation, who were now catered for in a way they hadn't been previously. Other Bannister signings including
Emma Freud and
Danny Baker proved less popular and were soon dropped from the schedules.
By 1995 the
Britpop explosion had proved the success of Bannister's strategy; the bands he'd championed a year or two earlier, when they were comparatively obscure and marginal, were now part of the mainstream, and Radio 1 was booming again.
Chris Evans, who had become a hugely popular national figure as breakfast DJ, was the figurehead of this boom, but eventually things went sour; by late 1996 Evans' show contained more criticisms of BBC executives than actual music, and in January 1997 Evans resigned after Bannister refused to allow him to waive his Friday show, in order to concentrate on his TV show
TFI Friday. After
Mark Radcliffe and
Marc 'Lard' Riley had an unsuccessful stint on the breakfast show, the team of
Kevin Greening and
Zoe Ball were hosting the breakfast show when Bannister left Radio 1 in
1998 (Ball would subsequently host the show on her own).
In the autumn of 1996 Bannister was appointed Director of Radio, a post which gave him overall responsibility over all the national BBC radio networks other than Five Live. He remained controller of Radio 1 alongside this until March 1998, when he was succeeded by
Andy Parfitt. In October 2000 Matthew Bannister resigned from the BBC. Since then he's worked as a freelance journalist, notably for
The Times. For much of
2007 he hosted the Morning Show on
Radio Five Live in place of
Victoria Derbyshire, who was on
Maternity Leave. He also presents a programme on
Radio 4 called
Last Word, which he's presented since
2005. In November 2007 and March 2008 he sat in for
Jeremy Vine on his lunchtime
Radio 2 show.
Bannister currently hosts
Outlook on the
BBC World Service.
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