Former BBC Radio 5 Live presenter Shelagh Fogarty is to join rival talk station LBC.
Fogarty, who was one of three high-profile 5 Live presenters to leave the station earlier this year along with Richard Bacon and Victoria Derbyshire, will present a three-hour weekday afternoon show between 1pm and 4pm.
She will go head to head with Football Focus presenter Dan Walker and Sarah Brett, who also front a 1pm to 4pm show on 5 Live.
It is one of a number of changes at LBC, including a new Sunday morning programme for another new recruit, Beverley Turner, while reporter Tom Swarbrick presents a new Sunday afternoon show.
Fogarty, who has guest presented a number of shows on LBC in recent months, said: ““I can’t wait to start. The opportunity to present a daily news show on LBC was too attractive an offer to pass up, especially as we head into a general election year.
“The station is also offering me a chance to exercise some different journalistic muscles too. As well as daily news, I plan to focus on some passion projects of my own and give them some real attention and airtime.
“For those, I’ll be talking to people across the UK and I hope we can all learn something about some of the toughest problems, which touch us all one way or another. I promise there’ll be some laughs, too.”
LBC, part of Global Radio, the biggest UK commercial radio group, went nationwide on digital earlier this year and has generated no shortage of headlines with Nick Ferrari’s weekly phone-in with deputy prime minister, Nick Clegg.
The talk network, which was the UK’s first commercial radio station when it launched a week ahead of Capital Radio in 1973, had a UK-wide audience of 1.28 million listeners in the third quarter of this year, according to the latest Rajar listening figures.
Radio 5 Live, which introduced a new weekday line-up in September following the departure of its three presenters, prompting criticism of a lack of female presenters in its weekday schedule, had 5.8 million.
Global Radio’s group executive director and director of broadcasting, Richard Park, said: “It’s testament to LBC’s national status that we’ve secured a presenter of Shelagh’s calibre as we start what will be an exciting election year for the station.
“Her warmth and wealth of experience will be a great addition to our powerful 2015 line-up.”
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