10 years of Monocle 24
Monocle 24 is celebrating 10 years of broadcasting award-winning news coverage and reportage, as well as the best in business, culture, design, media, urbanism and more. A decade in the making - but all just one click away. Head to monocle.com/radio now or listen wherever you get your podcasts.
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The Monocle Weekly: Monocle 24 turns 10
We take a trip down memory lane to celebrate the 10th anniversary of Monocle 24. Our producers, hosts and correspondents reflect on a decade of broadcasting, the places they have been and the stories they reported.
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‘Monocle on Culture’: 10 years
To celebrate 10 years of Monocle 24, some of our regular critics talk to us about the defining moments of the past decade in art, music and film. Robert Bound is joined by Tim Robey, Francesca Gavin and Will Hodgkinson.
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‘The Urbanist’: 10 years
Monocle 24 marks 10 years of broadcasting this week and to celebrate we are looking back at the last 10 years of urbanism, speaking to a few old friends and discussing what the next decade has in store.
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‘The Menu’: 10 years
We celebrate the 10th anniversary of Monocle 24 with a special edition, in which we speak to some of the best culinary experts across the globe about how the world of food and drink has changed in the last decade and what they expect from the next 10 years.
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Highlights from The Monocle Media Summit 2021
Highlights from The Monocle Media Summit 2021 with Monocle’s editors and Christine Ockrent, Matti Rönkä, Mishal Husain, Christoph Amend, Jeremy Leslie, Clarissa Ward and Peter York.
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Making waves
It all started with a tight but determined crew that was willing to take on a new challenge. Today, Monocle 24 is a round-the-clock radio station with a global network of bureaux and correspondents – and audience. We look back on many milestones.
Read the full article here.
The Timeline
2008
First edition of The Monocle Weekly podcast, hosted by Tyler Brûlé, Andrew Tuck and Robert Bound. In the launch programme, the team looks at the global landscape for the year ahead, speaks to the director general of Norway’s ministry of finance, and hears from philosopher Alain de Botton, who explains why happiness is more important than watching your salary.
2011
After plenty of sleepless nights, Monocle 24 goes live. Supported by a sponsorship with Rolex, the station debuts with four news shows a day: The Globalist, The Briefing, Midori House and The Monocle Daily. Recording the station’s idents and sweeps is none other than Kylie Minogue, and Scandi-jazz powerhouse The Quiet Nights Orchestra is in charge of the theme music.
The beginning of a syndicating deal with cbc means that the Canadian public broadcaster plays Monocle 24’s programmes overnight. Australia’s abc syndicates our station’s content and provides overnight newsreads with an apac focus in return.
Monocle 24 heads out of the cosy walls of the studio for its first outside broadcast in Washington. Guests include Al Arabiya’s Washington correspondent Hisham Melhem, as well as our long-serving monocle correspondent Sasha Issenberg.
2012
As the Olympic Games arrive in London, the team heads out to visit the countries’ “houses” in the city, from Denmark to Canada, Jamaica and Russia. Our Canadian foothold strengthens with the opening of our bureau in Toronto’s Little Italy – an office-cum-radio outpost fronted by a shop that quickly becomes a cornerstone of the neighbourhood.
2013
The crew embarks on a Nordic marathon to celebrate the magazine’s Arctic-themed issue. Resident Finn Markus Hippi produces four outside broadcasts in four days across four capitals: Stockholm, Oslo, Copenhagen and Helsinki. The show also gets on the road in North America, jumping between Vancouver, Seattle and Portland in just as many days.
Fernando Augusto Pacheco heads to Malmö to report on the Eurovision Song Contest for the first time, laying the foundations for years of enthusiastic coverage of the event.
2014
Our most-awarded, highest-rated programme makes its debut: The Foreign Desk begins life with an episode on austerity. It goes on to cover issues across the globe, from the Tigray crisis to the fall of Kabul.
monocle’s Tokyo outpost swaps glitzy Omotesando for leafy Tomigaya, giving the team a roomier set-up for live crosses. ubs comes on board as an anchor partner and to launch finance show The Bulletin with UBS. Monocle 24 underscores its reputation as the home for premium brands in audio and a hub for editorial innovation.
2015
The first ever Monocle Quality of Life Conference brings global experts and delegates to Lisbon to discuss what makes cities and businesses tick. Monocle 24 is on hand to broadcast panels and highlights.
A chat with designer Erik Spiekermann kickstarts our series of The Big Interview. The show goes on to host Norman Foster, Ian McKellen, Marina Abramovic and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and more.
In the immediate aftermath of the attack on the Bataclan club in Paris, the team heads to the scene and reports from the ground. The following year it provides the same level of on-the-beat reporting from Brussels.
2016
The Entrepreneurs: Live is the first in a series of podcasts recorded at Midori House’s event space in front of a keen audience. Editions of The Menu, Monocle on Design and The Foreign Desk also follow.
2017
Saint Etienne is one of many artists to record a live session at Midori House. When the set-up is too big for the studio, groups such as Hanson and Bebel Gilberto take over the event space, treating the team to a gig.
2018
The Foreign Desk is crowned best current affairs podcast at the British Podcast Awards.
2019
The design team gets involved in our most ambitious set-up yet: the Zürich HQ is kitted out with a state-of-the-art studio that can be peeked into from the street. It goes on to host round-table discussions every weekend for Monocle on Sunday.
We team up with Chanel for the last-ever interview with Karl Lagerfeld. The team heads to Milan for an all-singing, all-dancing, week-long outside broadcast in partnership with Hyundai for the world’s biggest furniture fair, Salone del Mobile. Designers, experts and journalists take their turns in front of our microphones.
2020
A level-headed, authoritative voice through the pandemic attracts a wider audience.
2021
Monocle 24’s commercial project The Power of Sound is nominated for some of the top audio prizes in the UK, pushing forward the network’s creative efforts.
Many of Monocle 24’s programmes, from The Urbanist to Monocle on Design and Monocle on Culture, celebrate their 500th episodes with special editions.
