Monday, May 05, 2008

Older radio audiences increase (some of them)

Saga radio (radio aimed at the 50-plus) was acquired by Guardian Media Group and renamed Smooth Radio. As the blurb says : “Smooth provides a broad mix of easy listening music from the last five decades and intelligent, entertaining speech for the mature 40-something adult”. Smooth has six stations across the UK.

RAJAR (Radio Joint Audience Research), which is the official body in charge of measuring radio audiences in the UK, has just published for the first quarter of 2008. It found that one of the best performing commercial networks was Smooth Radio, which increased its share from 1.9% to 2.1% and grew its reach from 2.19m to 2.38m. Now I wonder why that is? Might it have something to do with demographics?

In truth it also has something to do with Smooth's programming and the marketing campaign to promote the station But of all the commercial radio stations Smooth was the only one to show any significant increase in listeners. Dick Stroud

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