Town and Country Broadcasting are celebrating good listening figures for their five South Wales stations, including a positive start for Swansea Bay Radio.
Radio Pembrokeshire added 2,400 more listeners in the quarter taking its weekly audience reach to an impressive 56% across the county – the highest weekly reach percentage in the UK. With almost 51,000 listeners every week, Radio Pembrokeshire now commands five times the audience share of its nearest commercial competitor, more than twice as many listeners each week than BBC Radio 2 and three times the audience of BBC Radio Wales.
Ed Goddard, Programme Manager for Radio Pembrokeshire said: "Throughout the quarter our whole team were out and about broadcasting and reporting from events and locations across the county. It’s great to see this hard work rewarded with more and more local people tuning in."
Radio Carmarthenshire and Llanelli’s Scarlet FM added an extra 1,000 listeners. Now reaching a total of almost 35,000 listeners a week, Radio Carmarthenshire and Scarlet FM now have over 6,500 listeners more than their nearest commercial competitor and some 2,400 listeners a week more than BBC Radio 2 and 9,000 listeners more than BBC Radio Wales.
Bridge FM reports its best set of audience figures ever with a 33% reach and 38,500 listeners every week. Programme Manager Gareth Davies told RadioToday.co.uk: "Overtaking the commercial competition and the BBC is a massive achievement for Bridge FM. The Bridge team is out in our area everyday and we’ve created more opportunities for local people to get on air with news and views. This simple strategy has paid off with audience growth and even more loyal listeners."
Meanwhile the team at Town and Country Broadcasting’s newest station Swansea Bay Radio celebrate their first ever set of official RAJAR figures. With 36,000 listeners a week across the Swansea, Neath and Port Talbot areas and each listener tuning in for an average of 9.1 hours per week, the station has certainly made itself heard in such a competitive market after only 12 months on air.
In England, Radio Hampshire (formerly The Saint) was down on the quarter in terms of reach, but up when compared with this time last year.
Group Managing Director, Martin Mumford said: "These audience figures are a credit to our staff and proof that success comes from being locally focussed, relevant and entertaining. Over the past year each of our stations has seen improving audiences and record revenue growth, giving us a strong foundation for further growth".
Please note: Any figures compared year-on-year are subject to further investigation due to the introduction of a new survey by RAJAR from June '07.