Too many commercials, radio listeners say

A new Ofcom report reveals the thoughts of listeners to commercial radio.

More than one in five say there’s more advertising and programme sponsorships on air than they’re happy with, with a further 59% saying they wouldn’t want any more than there is already.

The findings are part of Ofcom’s annual survey of consumer attitudes towards broadcasting, which charts the changing public opinion towards media issues.

The research also finds that for local news, a small majority say that TV is their main source (53%), with 15% selecting newspapers, 10% radio and 6% the internet. Commercial radio listeners are more likely than BBC radio listeners to say they relied on the radio for coverage of local news (38% vs 31%), travel/weather (41% vs 34%), information about events/the community (32% vs 24%), and emergencies such as snow and floods (35% vs 39%).

Radio is seen as the second most impartial news source (52%), down from 57% in 2010, and behind television (59%). Ofcom suggests that the decrease could be related to a general decline in trust in the media following the past year’s events, with TV and radio taking the brunt of the decline, as other media were already likely to be seen as less impartial.

Regional differences are also highlighted by the report, with radio remaining particularly strong in Northern Ireland, where one-fifth (21%) of respondents say that their main media source for their nation’s news is radio, compared to 8% of respondents from Wales and 5% of respondents from Scotland.

Meanwhile, just 2% of radio listeners said they’d heard something on the radio that they found offensive in the last 12 months.