Former Rock FM axes local breakfast show with Leanne and Joel as Hits Radio Lancashire goes national

Hits Radio Lancashire - known for decades, until last year, as Rock FM and, originally, Red Rose Radio - will see its current breakfast line-up axed this summer.

Joel Ross and Leanne Campbell will disappear from the weekday 6am-10am slot, to be replaced by an as-yet-unannounced host or hosts who will broadcast to former local stations across various parts of the country.

The pair’s programme is the only one left on the station that has a Lancashire link. The local element had already been diluted just over a year ago after the then Rock FM breakfast show - presented by Joel - was merged with the one broadcast on Radio City in Liverpool, where Leanne was the co-host.

Following that move in January 2024, the Lancashire station and 14 others across the country were rebranded to Hits Radio last April.

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Parent company Bauer Media has now revealed it will scrap local and regional breakfast shows on all those stations in favour of a single programme for the whole of England and Wales from 9th June.

It says it will insert local news and travel information for Lancashire into the new show - as it does into other Hits Radio output, all of which already airs nationwide - as well as continuing to support disadvantaged local children via its Cash for Kids charity.

The change will mark the end of local programming on the former Red Rose Radio, which launched as a station serving Preston, Blackpool and surrounding areas, back in 1982.

It has been enabled by a change in legislation late last year which allowed stations originally established as local or regional services to remove the last of the already minimal number of shows broadcast just in local areas - the culmination of a process that started more than a decade ago.

Simon Myciunka, CEO of Bauer Media Audio UK, said of the shift to fully networked programmes: “We continually evolve to meet audience behaviours and advertiser needs and by launching one single national breakfast show across Hits Radio, we are supercharging our efforts to provide a more unified, engaging experience across the entire schedule while also retaining local news and information.

“I’d like to extend my thanks to our Hits Radio breakfast teams in England and Wales as they embark on their final run of shows. Their significant contribution has played a hugely important part of the Hits Radio story so far and we wish them well for the future.”

Bauer Media axed a dedicated weekday drivetime show on Rock FM in 2019, having previously removed mid-morning, early afternoon and evening programming for the station and local weekend shows.

Rock FM’s studios at the former St. Paul’s Church on Ringway in Preston were vacated in 2020, with the remaining local output then being produced in Manchester.

Separate services were established on the FM and AM frequencies of the original Red Rose Radio in 1990 - with Rock FM aimed at younger audiences and Red Rose Gold targeting an older demographic.

The medium wave station, which was relaunched in the late '90s as Magic 999 and, in 2015, as Rock FM 2, first introduced nationally networked programmes more than 20 years ago and finally waved goodbye to its last remaining local show - again, at breakfast - in 2013. That service is now part of the Greatest Hits Radio network, into which Blackpool station Radio Wave was also subsumed almost five years ago - bringing to an end all of its local programming except for news and information.

Several new local commercial radio stations for Lancashire have been established on digital radio and online in recent years - including one that has resurrected the Red Rose Radio name, along with the county-wide Central Radio North West and Coastal Radio for Blackpool, Fylde and Wyre.