Rob Jones (radio DJ)

Rob Jones born in Liverpool and attended Liverpool College, is a former DJ who was on 208 Radio Luxembourg from 1977 to 1984. He joined from Radio City in Liverpool at the same time as Mike Read and Steve Wright and went on to become Director of Programmes for RTL English Language Radio and TV. During his time at Radio Luxembourg he presented "Breakers" for ITV an opportunity which arose when Marc Bolan was killed in a car crash in Barnes. In 1982 Jones created and ran the innovative "Clip Connection" on RTL TV, an English, French and German language music channel. In 1984 he moved to SKY Channel as Head of Music Programmes producing 9 hours of music programming each day with VJs Pat Sharp, Gary Davies, Tony Blackburn, Amanda Redington and Linda de Mol. He was poached by Richard Branson in 1986 to run Music Box which Branson had recently purchased from Thorn EMI with Granada TV and Yorkshire TV. During the mid eighties Music Box provided the overnight programming for much of the ITV network.

In the late eighties Richard Branson's Virgin organisation seconded Rob Jones from Music Box to develop their radio interests. He recruited GWR, Yorkshire Radio, Radio Forth and Radio Trent to form a joint venture with Virgin called Radio Radio which produced an overnight sustaining service for 24 commercial radio stations in the UK. Radio Radio, "The Super Station" had a stellar presenter line-up which included Jonathan Ross (on radio for the first time) Johnny Walker, Ruby Wax, Bob Harris, Diana Luke and even Steve Davies the snooker player. Chris Evans joined the company as a producer where he met Carol McGiffin Rob Jones's assistant at the time. As the consultant to Talk Radio, Jones later recruited McGiffin to work with Moz Dee on a programme called The Rude Awakening. A young Andy Bird was Jones's No2 on the project. Bird would later head Disney International. In 1989 Jones negotiated the sale of Virgin's 40% to Owen Oyston who owned the Transworld Radio Group in Manchester, England.

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