The total number of hours that people listen to Isle of Wight Radio dropped nearly a hundred thousand hours in the last reported quarter.
Figures from industry-body RAJAR report that the Total hours for the Island radio station fell from 546,000 to 454,000 between the first quarter of 2011 and the second. A drop of 92,000 total hours – a 17% reduction.
Steepest decline since 2005
The drop is the steepest decline that’s been recorded since 2005. When compared with second quarter of the previous year (2010), RAJAR report 66,000 less hours were listened to over the year.
The previous quarter had already dropped 47,000 hours. Prior to that there had been seven months of growth from the low point of 289,000 in Q1 2009.
The figures have been out for nearly a quarter, but reporting on them had slipped our minds until the reminder for the latest RAJAR figures came out this week – hopefully the yet unannounced figures will have improved for them.
Weekly listeners remain the same
The level of weekly listeners has remained the same as the previous quarter – 37,000 – only a thousand down on the comparable quarter the year before.
Quite why this huge drop in Total hours has occurred is unclear.
We contacted two of Isle of Wight Radio’s owners about it yesterday, but as yet they haven’t replied.
Recent history
Isle of Wight Radio was taken over back in August 2009 by a locally-based consortium including Paul Topping; Claire Willis, former Area Director for The Local Radio Company; Ian Walker and Hedley Finn.
They recently bought The Beacon too.
Keep comments friendly please
For some reason, when we publish stories about IW Radio, there’s often a bit of nastiness in the reader’s comment – unusual for VB Reader’s comments. Please avoid doing it – that ‘Have a cup of tea’ idea really does work.
