Night Owl Alan entertained 50,000 runners

Metro Radio’s Night Owls host Alan Robson provided the music and chat at the start of the recent North East runs.

The station was part of the event with 16 hours of outside broadcasts covering the Junior Great North Run, the Great North 5K, and the Bupa Great North Run.

Metro had presenters and reporters completing the race while recording audio and capturing the emotion of runners as they paced out the 13.1 miles to South Shields.

Breakfast show presenters, Steve and Karen, were broadcasting live at the finish line, with Steve joining Karen after completing the run in just under two hours.

Metro Radio’s traffic helicopter, piloted by Captain Marky Mark, was the station’s eye in the sky on the day providing emotional commentary.

Programme Director, Chris Pegg, said: “As the region’s biggest and best event we wanted to give our listeners a real sense of occasion and for the output to have huge appeal regardless of whether you were running or not. To have so many presenters and reporters on the ground brought a few technical challenges but we were delighted with the output and the weekend was a great success.”

Metro Radio’s charity ‘Cash for Kids’ had around 250 people running for them, raising around £54,000 which will benefit disabled and disadvantaged children across the North East.

At cross-town rivals Capital, two of the station’s Breakfast Show presenters Bodg and Matt, alongside newsreader Anna Harding, participated in the run in aid of the station’s charity Help a Capital Child. In the run up to it last week, the Breakfast Show team were teasing Bodg quite a bit on-air for not doing any training in preparation.

BBC Radio Newcastle, Real Radio and Radio Tyneside also devoted programming to the annual event.