BBC Radio Jersey

BBC Radio Jersey (Jèrriais: BBC Radio Jèrri) is the BBC’s local radio station serving the Bailiwick of Jersey.

It broadcasts on FM, AM, DAB+, Freeview and via BBC Sounds from studios on Parade Road in Saint Helier.

Like other BBC enterprises in Jersey, funding comes primarily from television licence fees collected in Jersey.

According to RAJAR, the station has a weekly audience of 25,000 listeners and a 14% share as of September 2021.

The station first aired on 15 March 1982, when it was opened by George Howard, the then chairman of the BBC. The first voice to be hear was that of Peter Gore who was one of the four-person start-up team headed by Mike Warr. It launched from Broadcasting House, just off Rouge Bouillon in St Helier, and moved to its present premises in Parade Road in March 1994.

Roger Bara, a long-standing breakfast show presenter, retired in 2012.^[3]

In recent years, local output has been reduced to eight hours on weekdays, coinciding with an increase in regional programming shared with sister station BBC Radio Guernsey.

In addition to its FM and AM frequencies, the station also broadcasts on Freeview TV channel 719 and streams online via BBC Sounds. Transmissions on digital radio began on 1 August 2021 with the launch of the Channel Islands DAB multiplex, on which BBC Radio Guernsey also broadcasts, alongside BBC Radio Jersey Xtra, a part-time stream carrying the station’s AM opt-out content (chiefly parliamentary coverage), and a similar opt-out for Radio Guernsey. The stations are the first BBC stations to use the DAB+ standard – at the time of launch, all stations on the BBC National DAB multiplex, and all other BBC Local Radio stations on the UK mainland, used the earlier DAB format.