Graeme Smith (radio presenter)
Graeme Smith is a Liverpool born TV and radio presenter who is now based in London. He presents a live nightly half hour TV show show called Webmash on Current TV - a show featuring the best and most entertaining of the days events from the internet that airs at 8PM Monday-Thursday. Before this worked presenting regular shows on radio stations including former national AM station Virgin Radio, London indie/rock station XFM and the pop music based Galaxy Radio he has also broadcast on the London news-talk station LBC 97.3. He is still heard sometimes on the UK national rock music station Absolute Radio.
Career history
He started his professional broadcasting career aged 16 whilst still at school in his home city of Liverpool on local radio station Juice FM. He later moved to the Galaxy Network of youth focused dance and urban music stations to present the networked weekend breakfast show. Aged 20 he was signed to present the drivetime show at their flagship Galaxy Yorkshire based in Leeds broadcasting to Yorkshire.
Current TV
In March 2007 he started work on Al Gore owned Current TV. The channel had already been on air in the US since 2005.
The channel launched in the UK amidst a blaze of media publicity surrounding its unique user generated content proposition and Graeme was the first person to appear on the channel as the presenter of Google Current which was filmed at their London studios. He was a co-creator and presenter of the series on the global drugs problem, "Wasted" alongside presenting occasional special programming filmed at the studios of Current TV in Los Angeles. He now appears weeknights presenting a show called "Random Play" He is the main host of their news and entertainment strand "Webmash" which is a live nightly TV show.
Galaxy
From 2002 until 2006 Graeme worked for the Galaxy Network of youth focussed stations. He presented regular weekly networked shows whilst there including weekend breakfast and retro dance music show Galaxy Anthems. But it is for his 3 years on drivetime at their flagship Galaxy Yorkshire that he is best remembered. During that time he also presented the breakfast show for several weeks per year covering for Simon Hirst. He has also done stints as a radio DJ on Rock FM, MFM 103.4, Kerrang Radio and Hallam FM.
XFM
Graeme arrived at XFM London in March 2007 and was swiftly put onto weekday afternoons until the station took the controversial decision to axe DJ's across its daytime output and replace them with an experimental format known as "XU". This experiment lasted AbOUT a year during which time the station suffered heavy losses in RAJAR audience figures. He was moved to weekend afternoons and left the station in January 2008 to move to Virgin Radio. During his time at the station he also broadcast on their network which at the time included FM stations in Manchester, Scotland and South Wales in addition to the flag ship London station.
Absolute Radio
In February 2008 he moved to UK national radio station Virgin Radio taking over the Sunday early morning show and covering other shows across their schedule including late nights and their early evening show - The Most Wanted. He hosted the summer Saturday afternoon show in place of their regular football show in 2008 and also covered for JK and Joel on the weekend mid morning slot. The radio station was taken over by the Times of India and re-branded to Absolute Radio in October 2008 after which Smith began to appear less. He now occasionally covers weekend breakfast and Sunday mornings.
Other work
As well as his presenting work he has also appeared as a writer in various magazines including the Leeds Guide, Pink Paper and AXM and was a poster boy in best selling UK teen magazine "More" in 2003.
References
- [http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2007/dec/24/gcapmedia.commercialradio]Axed Capital DJ makes switch to XFM - The Guardian
- [http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/industry_sectors/media/article1805791.ece]Indie radio station network hangs the DJ
- 1 Al Gore brings DIY television revolution to Britain - Guardian
- [http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/6442567.stm]The TV channel without programmes - BBC News