Totnes Monster

Sometimes people come to Soundart and say ‘I know how to get more listeners’. Are they arrogant? Maybe, but in the short term they’d be right…

Brand the station, get a weekday drive time show, give Sarah and John more coffee in the morning (perhaps a coke habit at night), jingles. Also stop the weird art noise, lose the children and tighten up a bit (OK, a lot). Get a playlist attractive to our TSA and get a computer to play it properly. Forget once-a-fortnight shows and do sport on Saturday.

 

But we don’t.

 

Maybe it’s a hangup from our student radio days? Either way more and more people seem to be drawn to Soundart every month. Weird, being that we behave like a station hell bent on just-sometimes driving off even our most loyal listeners.

We’re not driven by figures, that’s why we have listeners. – Lucinda Guy, Creative Director, Soundart Radio

Our alternative royal wedding was one of the least organised days of broadcasting ever from Soundart (which takes some doing) and yet saw our highest listening figures of all time – you’ve got to ask yourself why?..

 

A recent survey shows very healthy listening figures for a community radio station – which begs the question should we go-for-growth! Or should we treat ourselves to a chocolate digestive and a nice cup of tea (and perhaps get chatting and forget to start the next record).

Soundart Radio 102.5 FM signal reaches well over 25 thousand people. According to the survey 4000 people around here have heard of Soundart Radio and half of them remember tuning in at least once. A word of caution is needed here though; there is some unrest about how listening is measured.

UK radio listening is usually measured by Rajar. They give you a diary to fill in. Each day is split up into 15 minute segments and you have to write down the station you listened to during each 15 minutes of the day.

Encouraged in this way you might actually listen to more radio. Or lie. Or forget. Or pretend you have better taste than you really do. And whilst you might forget the name of the station playing in the que, you won’t forget the Heart jingle now they placed it in your long term memory.

 

Far from being benign this method of audience measurement has changed radio. For presenters the job is to get a listener to tick those Rajar boxes – commercial stations aim for two boxes, a presenter who can get you to hang on for twenty minutes is well worth their salary. A presenter who you turn off after ten minutes, but who’s words never leave you, won’t pay the bills. The presenters aim then is to make no mistakes of the turn-this-off variety. Keep it sweet so the listener pops your name into that next Rajar Box. ChiChing!

 

Da Vinci may have said ‘art lives from constraints and dies from freedom’ but this approach to listeners is based in fear. Commercial radio fears you, they fear that you will turn away, they eliminate the causes of you turning away. They employ people to do this and if these people fail then they are fired.

 

British listening figures are further confused by something the Americans call ‘phantom cume’. The British don’t talk about it, but the Americans do. Cume, in American, is ‘Cumulative Listening’ and phantom cume is when you know you listened but remember only the brand you know. The aim is to have a brand so strong, so memorable, that you’ll litter the diary with false positives.

 

A survey, such as the one mentioned above adds another layer of potential leakage on top of phamtom cume: We can assume that the people interviewed had not been keeping diaries of their previous listening, so here we rely on memory. Also the researchers probably won’t have been talking to children, or the employed…

In short, I reckon the listenership is even higher than the already healthy results that the survey suggests. Way higher. But do the numbers really mean anything – is listenership what community radio is about anyway?

Prior to Classic FM’s launch on 7th September 1992,  Millions of listeners heard the continuous broadcast of birdsong. - Radio Birdsong.com

That test broadcast was made by one man, Quentin Howard, who built and tested Classic FM (in the physical sense). In the summer of 1992 more people listened to Birdsong than had ever listened to a test broadcast before. History was written. By one man. On his own.

There are some who will say that Soundart has a brand, a point I disagree with. We have achieved recognition for our work, both locally and on a much wider scale, awards and such. But we don’t have a station image or playlist or indeed anything I understand to mean brand. To me Soundart is different every time I listen. This lack of branding, though, is our greatest strength. It demonstrates a complete lack of fear. Interacting with people takes a trust in human nature.

It’s like opening a can of coke and taking a swig of yoghurt. - Soundart Listener

We don’t turn anyone down, says Lucinda Guy, creative director at Soundart Radio, as she wipes a chilled Diet Coke across her forehead. And we train them on air. We’ve got loads of filters they’re just a different shape, they involve lots of thinking, lots of listening. Lots of care, we care about the program makers. If we hear a show getting lost we talk to them. This isn’t an excercise in building a radio station, we are building a community.

What ever station would allow Furgus Ryan near a transmitter (Obvious Radio Show), or to give Gino Braginolo the space to develop the warmth and accessability needed to carry off his special brand of nuttery. What station would take a punt on Dame Elsie? – who, I am quite sure, will be on Radio 2 if she so desires. Who else but Soundart Radio? We don’t turn anyone away, that’s the door policy.

I still thank my lucky stars someone had the good grace to stop me playing pop music, a subject upon which I have no knowledge, or interest, and to limit the Totnes Monster show to an All Local Music policy. Without it we’d be a pale imitation, I’d be chasing the wrong star.

 

Internet radio listening in the UK is compartively tiny (when compared to FM Radio). – James Cridland (one of the guys who made the iPlayer, runs Media UK)

There are lies, damn lies and statistics. – Mark Twain

Web stream stats have flaws too but are colder, if not harder. Phantom cume will not help here, and neither will memory.

Briefly, Soundart stats for April this year are as follows:

Total number of people who clicked on the webstream in the 30 day period: 14,213

(Roughly 474 clicks on the webstream per day)

 

Total days worth of audio streamed in April: 113 Days.

-Just to clarify in one 30-day month we streamed enough audio to play for 113 entire days. Either 4 people listened for an entire month Or 10,848 people listened for a quarter of an hour. Possibly the true figure lies between the two…

On average we streamed 90 hours of audio per day, Aprils peak saw us streaming 183 hours of audio in one day. But then Mark Twain would agree there are lies, damn lies, and (web) statistics.

I hear some community stations and I do worry that quite a few don’t get it. Ratings claims are not a good thing to make for community radio. – Keri Jones runs Radio Scilly (quoted from a Digital Spy forum)

On the day of the last Totnes Monster show each listener on the webstream listened to an average of 35 minutes – roughly double that of a commercial station, in fact if we could do this to Heart’s listeners we would be getting Velux windows and a company car for Christmas. Bravo! Champagne all round.

 

Mind you, it was a strong line up…

It takes three years to make a station into ‘an overnight success’ – Vallerie Geller author Creating Powerful Radio.

 

Over the summer there’s some new programming. Friday night, for example, will be curated by myself under the Totnes Monster banner – expect a naughtier feel and brilliant music you won’t find elsewhere.

 

We are growing well folks, listenership is up. Membership is up. Station recognition is up. We have won awards. We have been commissioned to make radio for other people.

 

Ladies and Gentlemen, programme makers, volunteers: Radio: We are doin’ it right.

 

 

 

 

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