Times Radio is making lucrative offers to hire leading BBC presenters, with Radio 4 Any Questions host Chris Mason in discussions to join the new radio station and leading names such as the Today programme host Nick Robinson being approached about roles.
Sources said Times Radio was promising potential recruits higher salaries, editorial freedom and the chance to build a national talk radio station from the ground up at a time of potential job cuts at the BBC and enormous scrutiny of the corporation’s output.
Times Radio, which is owned by Rupert Murdoch’s News UK, will launch later this year and is designed to take on traditional speech radio outlets such as Radio 4. The station will not have any adverts and will instead be designed to drive awareness to the paywalled news outlet, promising a more upmarket take on speech radio.
Mason, a long-time BBC political correspondent, has gained a following as part of the successful Brexitcast podcast, which has recently become a BBC One programme under the Newscast banner. Less than a year ago he was appointed as host of Radio 4’s Any Questions, becoming only the programme’s fifth permanent host in its 78-year history, while he has also appeared as a stand-in presenter on BBC Breakfast.
Mason confirmed he had been approached. He said it was a “fascinating prospect for a station” but declined to comment further. In a sign of the ambition being shown by Times Radio, other well-known BBC presenters, including Robinson, are being approached while Radio 5 live’s Emma Barnett is among those viewed as possible hires.
Staff at News UK have also speculated about a potential move for the former Today presenter John Humphrys, who is working as a columnist for the Daily Mail while presenting on Classic FM.
The BBC may struggle to fight the raid on its top news presenters at a time when it is having to show pay restraint and cannot provide counter-offers to staff considering leaving. But presenters who may be tempted by the salaries and opportunity to build something new are concerned about losing access to the millions of listeners and high profile that the BBC’s radio stations provide.
The Sun’s political editor, Tom Newton-Dunn, has also been linked to a presenting role at the new station, as has the columnist Giles Coren and Matt Chorley, the editor of Times’s Red Box podcast. The station will also draw on the Times and Sunday Times’ correspondents to provide analysis, with the aim of landing major political interviews.
News UK has already made a substantial investment in radio, although its existing speech station, talkRadio, has struggled to find an audience and had been the focus of speculation that it could be shut down or turned into an online-only station that would allow it to circumvent broadcasting rules.
The other major investment by News UK has been in a revived Virgin Radio, paying Chris Evans substantial sums to host its breakfast show after he jumped ship from Radio 2. Aided by an enormous marketing campaign, Evans now attracts more than 1 million listeners a week but this is still a small fraction of the number reached by his successor at Radio 2, Zoe Ball.
Times Radio’s launch is being overseen by the Times Literary Supplement editor, Stig Abell, who said last month that he wanted to break free of traditional head-to-head arguments between pundits about politics.
“We want to reach people who don’t currently read the Times, people who don’t consider the Times,” said Abell. “We want people to think positively about the Times because we’re offering a high-end luxurious product.”
A source at parent company News UK said: “There are lots of conversations going on but any names are speculative at the moment.”
