’46 percent reach’ at Garrison

Army station Garrison Radio has conducted some new audience research and says it found that 46 percent of serving soldiers at two bases had listened to the service in the previous month.

The station claims figures show that in 2010 Garrison Radio was 'heard by more soldiers than any other local radio service' at Army bases where it broadcasts in the UK.

Their survey, conducted by trained researchers from market research company Public Knowledge, asked serving soldiers and dependents about their radio listening habits. 46 per cent of serving soldiers at the Army bases studied said they had listened to Garrison Radio in the previous four weeks.

The study was carried out at Aldershot and Catterick Garrison in October 2010. 245 randomly chosen soldiers and dependents living at the bases were questioned in detail about their radio listening and their attitudes to Garrison Radio.

54 percent of all questioned thought that Garrison Radio offered the best Army news and information and 58 per cent felt the service should be made available in more Army locations.

Garrison Radio founder and Managing director Mark Page says this is just the start for the unique radio stations: "We’ve been asked to make the service available in other Army locations and plan to roll it out to other garrisons during 2011."

Mark added:"69 per cent of soldiers said that, when posted abroad, they would like to listen to an Army service linking directly with their garrisons at home so we’d like to take the Garrison Radio model overseas too. And we are looking at offering the same service to all three services in the future, at home and abroad, via radio, television and the internet."

We told you last year that Garrison Radio [link=https://radiotoday.co.uk/news.php?extend.6450]intends to bid[/link] for the contract to supply official audio and visual media content to the British forces for when the current deal with BFBS ends in 2013.