The management at RAJAR has issued a statement about “numerous inaccuracies” contained in the Irish News following the recent listening figures.
An article published in the Belfast-based Irish News dated August 2nd 2018 by the Business Editor reported numerous inaccuracies in the official RAJAR data, RAJAR said.
It’s the first time RAJAR has publicly called out a report for being wrong, with the body saying it was “misleading to the reader”.
The newspaper ran with an article headlined “It’s a summer switch-off for commercial radio, says RAJAR figures” and the second sentence: “All of the north’s advertising-led platforms lost listeners in the last three months compared with the same period a year ago, with close to 80,000 people reaching for the off button.”
The correct figures state that All Commercial radio reach went down 9,000 Quarter on Quarter and went up by 19,000 year on year.
The paper went on to report: “The numbers also slipped back year-on-year at Q Radio down 24,000…” – the correct figures show a year on year decline for Q Radio of 29,000. Q Radio Network (or Total Q Radio declined by 24,000 year on year)
And also:“And the numbers also slipped back year-on-year at…Cool FM (down 9,000) – The correct figure is that in Q2 2018 Cool FM suffered a drop of 1,000 listeners Year on Year.
The Irish News has acknowledged the inaccuracies and the original article has since been corrected online and also in the printed version of the Business supplement dated Tuesday August 21st.
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Posted on Friday, August 24th, 2018 at 3:51 pm by RadioToday Staff