BBC Radio Cymru is a Welsh-language national radio networkoperated byBBC Cymru Wales, a division of the BBC. It broadcasts two stations throughout Wales from studios in Cardiff, Bangor, Aberystwyth and Carmarthen on FM, DAB, digital TV and online. The main network broadcasts for hours a day from 5:30am to midnight with overnight programming simulcast from BBC Radio 5 Live after closedown. A second station, Radio Cymru 2, broadcasts on digital and online platforms, and provides separate breakfast programming for two hours every morning. The managing editor of BBC Radio Cymru is Rhuanedd Richards.
Overview
BBC Radio Cymru began broadcasting on the morning of Monday 3 January 1977, its first programme being an extended news bulletin presented at 6:45am by Gwyn Llewellyn and Geraint Jones. This was followed at 7am by the first edition of the breakfast magazine show Helo Bobol!, presented by Hywel Gwynfryn with contributions from a network of local reporters in studios across Wales. The first record played on Radio Cymru was Ffrindiau Bore Oes by Hergest. The station was the first broadcasting outlet dedicated wholly to programmes in Welsh, allowing much more airtime for such output than had previously been available on the old Radio 4 Wales. Initially, the service was part-time and restricted to breakfast shows, extended news bulletins at breakfast, lunchtime & early evening and a number of off-peak opt-outs from a sustaining Radio 4 Wales feed. In November 1979, Radio Cymru's programming was expanded to 65 hours a week, introducing mid-morning output on weekdays, along with a growing line-up of dramas, light entertainment and documentaries. The network continued to expand over the next two decades before achieving a continuous service of up to 20 hours a day. Later developments in the 21st century saw Radio Cymru introducing a nightly youth strand, C2, and regional opt-outs for South West Wales, which were axed in 2008 but later reintroduced to provide live commentary of Swansea City A.F.C. matches. The station has also been streaming online since January 2005. Radio Cymru is similar in format to many "general" radio stations, with news programmes at breakfast, lunchtime, and drive-time ; together with presenter-driven sequences mixing music with chat to invited studio guests, calls from listeners, competitions etc. Radio Cymru also produces drama, features, current affairs, youth, and sports programming. Over the years, it has done much to promote the language, with its sports commentators coining new terms which later became accepted by Welsh linguists. One of its more unusualand longest-runningprogrammes is Y Talwrn, a poetry competition in which teams must come up with poetry in specific styles on specific topics.
Listening figures
According to RAJAR, the station has a weekly audience of 124,000 listeners and a listening share of 2.1% as of December 2018. The average number of hours per listener is 9.1 hours a week.
On 19 September 2016, BBC Cymru launched a pop-up radio station, Radio Cymru Mwy, broadcasting for three months in the run-up to the station's 40th anniversary. Consisting of five hours of music-led entertainment programming each weekday, Radio Cymru Mwy was available on DAB in south east Wales and online. Six months after the station closed, BBC Cymru announced it would launch a permanent second station, Radio Cymru 2. The new service airs for two hours every morning on digital and online platforms, as a music and entertainment alternative to the main network, which airs the breakfast news programme, Post Cyntaf. BBC Radio Cymru 2 began broadcasting at 6.30am on 29 January 2018. It airs as an opt-out service from 6.30am-8.30am on weekdays, 7-9am on Saturdays and 8-10am on Sundays. The daily breakfast show broadcasts from Cardiff and Bangor with short news bulletins on weekdays from Aberystwyth.
Transmission
BBC Radio Cymru is broadcast across Wales FM and DAB. It is also available on Freeview in Wales, throughout the UK on Freesat, Sky, Virgin Media and internationally online. As Radio Cymru was created from an opt-out of BBC Radio 4, it inherited the FM transmitters previously used by Radio 4 across Wales. At the time of the station's launch, it was the only radio service in the UK broadcasting solely on FM. BBC Radio Cymru 2 is broadcast across Wales on DAB. It is also available on Freeview in Wales, throughout the UK on Freesat, Sky, Virgin Media and internationally online.
