91Èȱ¬

Have you been watching your radio? That's right, not "listening to" but "watching". At 5 Live, we've been developing a way of delivering radio that we call "visualisation".

Radio with pictures might sound like television, but it's important to remember that visualising radio is a different medium altogether. Our aim is to give the option of a rich multimedia experience while ensuring that we don't interfere with those listening to the linear transmission.

We've already experimented with visualisation using the red button () and the website (Mark Kermode), and our four-camera set-up means that we can offer the 91Èȱ¬ News Channel live content, like yesterday's phone-in when Nicky Campbell hosted Harriet Harman.

Now we're taking the next step: for the next few weeks, the Simon Mayo programme will be broadcast live for three hours in our brand new "visualisation console".

We combine the live video stream from our studio with news and sport headlines, listeners' text messages and a behind-the-scenes live information scroll, written in the control room.

Our plan also involves feeding in live pictures of breaking news. A very busy first day yesterday meant that we tested the console to its limits.

The audience response so far has been fantastic, and something we have learned from. When we broke for news, sport and travel, we initially put up a holding card. But enough listeners demanded to see what was going on that we replaced it with the video of everybody coming and going,

Unfortunately, some people haven't been able to see all the additional content because their web browser hasn't had the right Flash "plug-in" - and that included Simon Mayo in the studio. That will be the first thing we fix. The sound was out of sync with the pictures if you were watching on a Firefox browser on a Mac, and we'll fix that too.

The trial will continue for another three weeks (except on Wednesdays, when we're in our Westminster studio), finishing with a live outside broadcast from Edinburgh on June 19th. It's a learning experience for all of us, so please have a look and let us know what you think.

Brett Spencer is the interactive editor for 5 Live.