[cma-l] Audience figures for Community Radio

Fri Feb 11 18:37:34 GMT 2011

Quite frankly there’s no point in consuming electricity and using up valuable spectrum if you have no idea how many people are listening! 

One of the best things we have done is commission audience research both quantitative and qualitative. We don’t like to go head to head with commercial stations, but when they start quoting RAJAR figures this really gets frustrating.  

Here’s some RAJAR facts;

1)      According to RAJAR their research is statistically inaccurate for stations with a low TSA – below 300,000 - due to the amount of diaries used.

2)      We were quoted by RAJAR near £10,000 per annum the results would not be available for 1 year – your own research could be done in weeks.

3)      Stations choose the postcodes for their survey – hence are able to influence their figures.

4)      Stations can modify their TSA, hence affect share in a particular market.

5)      In my experience very few stations have matching TSA, MCA and published reach in their media pack – An example is of a local youth station claiming more 55+ at PM drive so they could win clients off a local Heart station.          

6)      I have filled in a RAJAR diary and I can tell you that unsurprisingly myself and my family weren’t able to recall every 5 minutes of every day which station we listen to  – remember every 5 minutes counts as 15 minutes listening!

7)      Stations on DAB and FM often don’t have the same coverage hence their RAJARs can be misleading. 

The bottom line is get your survey’s done, use them to publicise your successes and don’t believe everything commercial radio stations say.  

Alan

Alan Coote

Managing Director 

The Bay Radio

Office 01202 580200

Studio 01202 571028

Mobile 07801 518858

Email alan.coote at thebayradio.com

Web www.thebayradio.com <http://www.thebayradio.com/> 

The Bay Radio, 25B Elliott Road, Bournemouth, BH11 8LQ

Description: The-Bay-logo-small.gif 

From: cma-l-bounces at mailman.commedia.org.uk [mailto:cma-l-bounces at mailman.commedia.org.uk] On Behalf Of Simon
Sent: 11 February 2011 9:52 AM
To: 'Trevor Lockwood'; 'CMA-L'
Subject: Re: [cma-l] Audience figures for Community Radio

Trevor

That must cost you a small fortune in PPL and streaming fees!

In the past, Ive asked Canstream for some streaming data for the sector, best, worst, average etc without identifying the stations concerned so that we can do some bench marking.  Unfortunately its not been possible.  I hope that changes as the comparisons would be useful, anonymous or not.

Simon

From: cma-l-bounces at mailman.commedia.org.uk [mailto:cma-l-bounces at mailman.commedia.org.uk] On Behalf Of Trevor Lockwood
Sent: 10 February 2011 20:06
To: CMA-L
Subject: Re: [cma-l] Audience figures for Community Radio

Hi

I love the assumptions made by statisticians.

Can I assume the 2.98% Internet listeners being representative - as we had 200,000 unique Internet listeners last month. It's good to know that we have about half of the estimated total audience.

What are the rest of you doing?

Trevor

107.5 FM
Chairman
Felixstowe Radio Community Interest Company  <http://www.felixstoweradio.co.uk> 

Registered Number 6419058 
3 Great Eastern Square, Felixstowe IP11 7DY
01394 282123
Director Community Media Association <http://www.commedia.org.uk/> 
Vice Chairman Suffolk Association of Voluntary Organisations <http://www.savo.co.uk> 
Trustee Media Fish Suffolk

--- On Thu, 10/2/11, Clive Glover <clive.glover at btconnect.com> wrote:

From: Clive Glover <clive.glover at btconnect.com>
Subject: Re: [cma-l] Audience figures for Community Radio
To: "Associated Broadcast Consultants" <info at a-bc.co.uk>
Cc: "CMA-L" <cma-l at commedia.org.uk>
Date: Thursday, 10 February, 2011, 9:19

This shows the percentages of total digital listening hours by platform, including Internet, DAB and via digital television (FreeView/Sky/FreeSat) as quoted by RAJAR. 

I don't think you can extrapolate these figures to suggest that because x thousand hours were spent listening to your Internet service then your total audience on FM is Internet hours divide by 2.2 and times 100!

You might get away with something based on the RAJAR figure that 67% of listening is on FM so you could imply that any other listening is on your other platform, ie Internet but I suspect 33% would be a high proportion of the audience for a localised CR service.

When faced with questions about our audience we provide a realistic (we hope) estimate and stress the quality of a CR audience rather than the numbers!

Clive Glover

Radio Verulam

St Albans

On 9 Feb 2011, at 22:13, Associated Broadcast Consultants wrote:

This document says 2.2%, but you'd need to check with James the source of that figure.  http://radiodns.org/wp-content/uploads/2009/03/RadioDNS-EBU_pdf.pdf

Glyn

On 9 February 2011 14:03, Shane Carey <shane at eclectic-productions.co.uk> wrote:

Hi all, 

I have to make an argument for audience reach through FM, based on our online listenership. 

Somebody referred to a study done by Rajar, in which they estimated Web listens equate to 2.9% of total analogue listenership. While this does seem an incredible claim, it would be useful to be able to reference such a report – particularly if conducted by Rajar. 

Has anyone come across it, or heard of something similar? 

Best, 

Shane

Shane Carey

Director

Eclectic Productions

www.eclectic-productions.co.uk <http://www.eclectic-productions.co.uk/> 

www.reprezent.org.uk <http://www.reprezent.org.uk/> 

020 8320 0880

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