[4] The TV-am/Virgin consortium was awarded the licence in April 1992, after the Radio Authority said that it was not satisfied that Independent National Broadcasting would be able to sustain the service.

[6] Later that year, TV-am lost its ITV franchise[7] and its stake in the radio station was sold in March 1993[8] to Apax Partners, JP Morgan Investment Corporation and Sir David Frost.

[11] The original line-up of DJs included Richard Skinner, Russ Williams, Jono Coleman, Mitch Johnson, Graham Dene, Nick Abbot, Wendy Lloyd, Tommy Vance, Emperor Rosko and Dave Fanning.

Chris Evans was also hired to present a Saturday morning show, following his success at BBC GLR in the weekend mid-morning slot.

[20] Virgin Radio launched on 105.8 MHz FM in London on 10 April 1995[21] beginning with a message from broadcaster David Frost at 6 am followed by the Russ 'n' Jono breakfast show.

[22] Within a year, Virgin Group was considering the next steps for the radio station, including the option of a flotation[23] or buying back the shares of JP Morgan, Apax and Sir David Frost.

[25] The Radio Authority approved the acquisition,[26] but Nigel Griffiths, the Consumer Affairs Minister, referred the takeover to the Monopolies and Mergers Commission (MMC).

[37] The deal was announced on 8 December 1997, and would see the formation of the Ginger Media Group, an umbrella company overseeing Virgin Radio and producing programmes such as TFI Friday.

[40] In August 1998, Evans took a spur of the moment decision one weekend to launch a Saturday afternoon show called Rock 'n' Roll Football, which continues to be broadcast on Absolute Radio.

had yet to give away its top prize, Virgin Radio set a broadcasting first when Clare Barwick won £1 million at the culmination of "Someone's Going to Be a Millionaire".

[41] It hired Goldman Sachs to run the sale process, and considered a public flotation,[44] before selling to the Scottish Media Group for £225 million in March 2000.

[46] Chief executive John Pearson, who had been with the station since before launch, resigned in April 2005,[47] and was replaced by Fru Hazlitt, who had previously been managing director of Yahoo!

Long before the station's AM transmitters were closed in January 2023, it had always placed a great emphasis on other methods of transmission than medium wave, as the 1215 kHz frequency suffered from considerable interference, particularly after dark – BBC Radio 1, which used 1215 kHz for its first eleven years on air, moved to higher-quality medium wave frequencies (now used by talkSport) in 1978 primarily for this reason.

[citation needed] On 12 April 2007, it was announced that SMG plc was to sell Virgin Radio, to enable the company to focus on its television station, STV.

[57] Subsequently, by September 2014, all other London-based Bauer stations moved from Mappin House to a refurbished One Golden Square, creating a new national radio hub.

[58] The station ended transmission on that frequency on 16 December 2018, following Bauer's decision to broadcast Greatest Hits Radio on FM across the West Midlands.

[68] A year after launch, David Campbell was quoted as saying that "the music policy was wrong, even though Virgin had lots of research to suggest it was doing what listeners said they wanted.

In a blog post in February 2009, Head of Music James Curran noted that the 30 most-played artists in the first four months of Absolute Radio had been: Manic Street Preachers, Coldplay, Arctic Monkeys, Snow Patrol, Kings of Leon, The Killers, Oasis, Travis, U2, Placebo, Suede, Kaiser Chiefs, Kasabian, Queen, Keane, Stereophonics, Caesars, Elbow, Bruce Springsteen, R.E.M., Nickelback, The Offspring, Aerosmith, The Rolling Stones, Biffy Clyro, The Beatles, David Bowie, Nirvana, The Police and Blur.

[citation needed] Virgin Radio's original line-up included Russ Williams, Richard Skinner, Mitch Johnson, Tommy Vance, Jonathan Coleman and Nick Abbot.

Martin Collins, Gary Davies, Daryl Denham, Chris Evans (who also owned the station), Ben Jones, Neil Francis, Alan Freeman, Tony Hadley (from Spandau Ballet), Nicky Horne, Janey Lee Grace, Kevin Greening, Simon James and Hill, Gary King, Jason King, Phil Kennedy, Jeremy Kyle, Allan Lake, Iain Lee, Geoff Lloyd, Tim Lovejoy, James Merritt, Pete Mitchell, Al Murray, Christian O'Connell, John Osborne, Lynn Parsons, Steve Penk, Annabel Port, Vic Reeves, Joel Ross, Jo Russell, Holly Samos, Harriet Scott, Tim Shaw, Graeme Smith, Suggs, David Tennant, Clive Warren, Ray Cokes, Dave Gorman, Pete Donaldson and Frank Skinner.

Ian Wright joined the station to host a post-match phone-in programme, as well as a regular music show on Absolute Radio 90s and a football podcast.

[61] For the last few weeks, taking advantage of the separate satellite feed to the AM transmitter sites, the commercial breaks split-linked, being replaced on AM by the presenter of the show that was on reading the pending closedown script, then Leona Graham reading the same script as the station voice, then part of a radio-themed song being played before programming cut back in.

Transmission of the closedown loop that carried information about Absolute Radio's other platforms stopped at 2:15 pm on Thursday 26 January 2023 from the station's last AM transmitter to be switched off, in Lisnagarvey, Northern Ireland (with the very last words being "thanks for listening to Absolute Radio-") [2] but the loop remained playing on the satellite feed to the AM transmitters for many months afterwards, until that was finally removed.

In the summer of 1993, Virgin Radio began broadcasting in stereo on the Astra 1A satellite on an audio sub-carrier of the Sky News channel.

[135] In 2010 applications were released for the Amazon Kindle,[136] the Nokia Ovi Store, the BlackBerry[137] and Windows Phone 7[138] and Absolute Radio was selected as a launch partner for the Apple iAd mobile advertising network.

All Absolute branded channels broadcast online and via smartphone apps, with several also transmitted over DAB and digital television platforms.

Pete Mitchell was the main daytime presenter, returning to Golden Square: he was last on Virgin Radio in 2005 hosting the Breakfast show with Geoff Lloyd.

A radio station launched on 4 December 2009 on DAB, Freesat, Sky, Virgin Media and the internet which plays classic hits and is aimed at "reluctant adults" who want to reconnect with the tunes of their youth.

Absolute Radio 90s launched on 21 June 2010 on DAB to a 13 million population in London, Essex, Wiltshire, Bristol, Berkshire and Bath.

The station used the 1215 MW frequency to play songs from The Andrews Sisters, Vera Lynn, Billie Holiday, Judy Garland, Glenn Miller, Bing Crosby, Doris Day and Gracie Fields for 24 hours with Dave Berry,[157] Leona Graham[158] and Claire Sturgess presenting shows, which included archive and reminisces from VE Day veterans.