The Jay & Jasmine Show

The Jay & Jasmine Show is a Euroish breakfast radio show presented by Jay Cardle and Jasmine Lawson for The Hits 105 in Euro City, The Hits 100 in Belton and on the national DAB and satellite radio station, The Hits.

The show is syndicated across The Hits network in the late drive slot in a two-hour slot.

The Jay & Jasmine Show is one of the most well-known and prestigious radio shows in the country, albeit is known for causing controversy and outrage for it's scatalogical and heavily sexual sense of humour.

History
The Jay & Jasmine Show commenced on 6 January 2003 on Play 105 in Euro City, replacing The Breakfast Club with Trevor Collingwood. It took less than a year for the programme to become the second most popular breakfast radio show in the city behind The Paul Hewson Show on the national 3FM.

They took over as the presenters of the revamped Hit40ER which took over from The Pepsi Chart Show in January 2004, which in addition to Play was syndicated to other commercial CHR stations, giving Jay & Jasmine a national audience.

A massive boost for Jay & Jasmine came in May 2004, when the programme began to be broadcast nationwide as Play 105 became available on Sky Satellite Radio, as well on the DAB multiplex.

By September 2004, Jay & Jasmine overtook The Paul Hewson Show in the Euro City ratings and made significant gains in the national ratings via nationwide DAB and satellite availability, becoming the no. 1 breakfast radio show in the capital and no 1. digital and satellite radio breakfast show throughout the country. They quickly initiated a "Hewson Lose Some" campaign against 3FM celebrating their ratings victory, and to turn listeners across the country away from 3FM to Play. Hewson hit back with "Jay and Jasmine Are A Joke" on his show, beginning a long and genuine feud that persists to this day.

The show began to win prestigious awards at the Euroish Radio Academy Awards, including the "Best Radio Show" award at the 2005 awards.

In September 2014, they announced they were to leave Play at the end of the year to defect to 365 Media's new contemporary hit radio network The Hits, which was to replace the Classic Gold network in the Euro City and Belton regions and the existing DAB station of the same name.

Controversy
Despite the programme's enduring popularity, the show has been the subject of controversial issues over the years. Throughout the programme's 20 year tenure the programme has been criticised for it's perceived bias in regards to political issues, taking a heavily slant to current events in the world, as well as the programme's content and humour being very sexualised, scatalogical and profane, which many believe is unsuitable for it's breakfast time slot when children are very likely to be listening. Jay Cardle is described as an embodiment of the stereotype.

The programme was briefly suspended from broadcast in September 2008, following an incident in which a young couple who were dating at the time were questioned live on air about true love and their sexual history in front of their parents and strapped to lie detectors. After revealing they had sexual experiences, Jay Cardle hurled abuse at the boy & girl, refering to the girl as a "fat slag" and the boy as a "nonce" whilst the parents were paid a reported €5 million to stay silent throughout the feature. The couple were offered a deal to either be given €1 million to split immediately or for one of them to spend 3 nights on a psych ward. As a twist, they accepted the €1 million however whilst the boy was sent home, the girl was immediately taken to a psych ward at a hospital in Faulkshire where she spent 6 nights (double the threatened amount) and cut off from all contact with her relatives. They both went on to commit suicide. The Jay & Jasmine Show was heavily criticised for this, with Paul Hewson saying on 3FM "this is a sick manipulation of the broadcast medium" whilst Dave Cook on Liquid News called it an "unthinkable act that defies every level of common sense." Play was fined €500,000, a record amount to this day, and the programme was taken off air until it returned in January 2009, with Trevor Collingwood making a comeback through the Autumn.