BBC Radio 4 Extra

BBC Radio 4 Extra (formerly BBC Radio 7) is a British digital radio station from the BBC, broadcasting archived repeats of comedy, drama and documentary programmes originally on BBC Radio 4 nationally, 24 hours a day. It is the principal broadcaster of the BBC’s spoken-word archive, and as a result the majority of its programming originates from that archive. It also broadcasts extended and companion programmes to those broadcast on sister station BBC Radio 4, and provides a “catch-up” service for certain Radio 4 programmes.

The station launched in December 2002 as BBC 7, broadcasting a mix of archive comedy, drama and current children’s radio. The station was renamed BBC Radio 7 in 2008, then relaunched as Radio 4 Extra in April 2011. For the first quarter of 2013, Radio 4 Extra had a weekly audience of 1.642 million people and had a market share of 0.95%; in the last quarter of 2016 the numbers were 2.184 million listeners and 1.2% of market share.