The BBC Trust has rejected a claim that BBC 5 Live broadcasts too little news.

The operator of talkSPORT, UTV, claimed 75 per cent of 5 Live's output was not news, as required by the station's licence agreement.

A planned service review of 5 Live will now monitor the station more closely and assess how to measure news content in future.

UTV's complaint was originally made to BBC managers last May, after the commercial company had monitored 5 Live on a second-by-second basis and found that news (including information and sports news) accounted for 61 per cent of output on Monday 1 March, 2010, and 44 per cent of output on Saturday 13 March, 2010.

When the BBC managers carried out an analysis for the same days they found news accounted for 81 per cent of output on 1 March, and 54 per cent of output on 13 March.

The BBC had measured content on a programme-by-programme basis, so if a one-hour news programme contained sport, it was all categorised as news output.

UTV complained again saying BBC management's analysis had shown only 70 per cent of output was news and in February, took their grievance to the trust.

The trust has now published its findings which states the way UTV measured 5 Live's output was not as effective as the BBC's method, as second-by-second analysis could be subjective and content will vary daily, particularly when dealing with breaking news stories.

However, the trust has now ordered more work on how the output of news and sport is measured "because a more nuanced method of monitoring the proportion of news output against this commitment … would be desirable".

In a statement the BBC Trust said: "UTV have however raised some issues that merit further exploration and we will do this as part of the planned service review of 5 Live that will launch shortly."

Free daily newsletter

If you like our news and feature articles, you can sign up to receive our free daily (Mon-Fri) email newsletter (mobile friendly).