Up All Night was broadcast continuously since Radio 5 Live's launch on 28 March 1994 until March 2020. The show originally lasted three hours and was extended to four from 1998. One of the show's two main presenters, Rhod Sharp, had proposed the idea of an all-night radio show for the new station that made use of the BBC's correspondents from all over the world. He continued to present several shows each week until March 2020, when he stepped down. Dotun Adebayo was the show's second main presenter, hosting the show from Friday night to Sunday night. Other presenters included Richard Dallyn, Dalya Raphael and Russell Fuller. Up All Night used guest presenters regularly on Thursday nights from 3 November 2017. The first guest was Richard Foster, then Tom Green, and Rachael Bland. Following the departure of Sharp in March 2020, the programme was replaced by a nightly phone-in show, syndicated across BBC local radio stations. Adebayo moved to the weeknight slot and some popular features, such as the World Football Phone-In, were carried over.
Broadcast locations
Originally broadcast from studios at Broadcasting House, London and then from studios at Television Centre, the show's production, along with the rest of the BBC Radio 5 Live scheduled programmes, moved to MediaCityUK, Salford, Greater Manchester in 2012. After 9/11, where he reported for BBC News, and while taking a sabbatical, Sharp and his wife fell in love with the fishing town of Marblehead, Massachusetts, in the United States. Since 2004 he has presented his nights on the show, from the town. Initially using the studios and ISDN line of local radio station WESX, since 2007 he has presented the show from a home studio within the couple's 18th-century house in Marblehead's Old Town section. Broadcasting from the United States makes Sharp "pretty unique" among BBC radio hosts, according to former BBC deputy news director Stephen Mitchell. The phone-in show that replaced Up All Night is broadcast from the BBC Radio London studios.
Features
The show has a heavy interest in the United States, partly due to time differences with America being 5-7 hours earlier than the UK, and often features news and interviews from there. The Super Bowl has also been broadcast in an extended programme; this however is streamed from another provider and cannot be broadcast live on the Internet for copyright reasons. The programme has launched a couple of Twitter pages and has a group on Facebook. Some elements of the show are available to download by podcast. Namely; Game On, World Football Phone-In and Dr Karl.
Regular features
The programme has gained a cult audience because of its off-beat approach to the news combined with various regular features :
Monday: The Phone-in, topics have included gardening, parenting and DIY.
Tuesday: Game On, video game culture explored. This is the BBC's oldest games focused strand and has been produced in its current form since 2008.
Wednesday: East Coast / West Coast: a regular look at US news and culture from either Los Angeles or New York.
Thursday: Science questions to Dr Karl who joins the show from the Australian ABC network.
Friday: The North American Sports Show, the first edition was broadcast in September 2018. Tech Phone-In, listeners phone in with tech related problems or questions to Fevzi Turkalp, tech expert and founder of website gadgetdetective.com.
Saturday: World Football Phone-In, with journalists Tim Vickery, Mina Rzouki, Jon Arnold, Mark Meadows, Paul Sarahs, John Duerden and Mark Gleeson covering some of the world's football hotbeds.
Sunday: The Virtual Jukebox, where callers suggest and then vote on a music track to be added to a growing list of tunes. A playlist is available on Spotify
For many years from the beginning of the programme the film critic, Dave Aldridge was a weekly contributor. In 2007 the programme pioneered a monthly live mental health phone-in with regular guest, Martin Seager, Consultant Clinical Psychologist and adult psychotherapist who heads an NHS psychological services department in the London area. Another notable former contributor was Cash Peters, who reported from California on the latest US television news.
