Rajar's released at Midnight.

All the radio stations that subscribe to RAJAR will have recieved their Q1 2012 figures today, and the public figures get released at Midnight tonight.

For me here at Viewpoint, this means that I will be paying especially close attention to the figures for Atlantic FM.  And no, I do not mean Heart Cornwall, as that did not start until May 7th, so well into Q2.  These figures will be the last set of figures for Atlantic FM, as it was.  The figures in Q2 will be transitional between Atlantic FM and Heart Cornwall, so we won't get an idea how Heart Cornwall is really doing until Q3.  Even then, because RAJAR use a year's worth of listening figures to determine the final numbers for Atlantic FM / Heart Cornwall, it won't be until the Q2 2013 figures are released before we get a clear set of Heart Cornwall figures as opposed to a combination of Atlantic FM and Heart Cornwall.

There are three sets of figures that you should pay close attention to. 

Average Hours Per Listener: This is quite simple.  The average number of hours that a listener listens to the station per week.  The lower the number, the less time is spent listening to the station.  For example, 7 hours per listener would indicate an average of an hour per day.  Less than this is considered bad performance.  Above 10 hours a week would be considered good performance.

Listening Share in TSA: This requires a little bit of explanation.  TSA means Total Survey Area, the area which is used to measure the audience.  The population figure on the results give you the size of the population in that TSA aged 15 or older.  The total number of hours that the station accrues, is divided by the total number of hours spent by listeners listening to the radio as a whole, and that gives you your share of listening.  The higher the number, the better the performance.  Below 5% share in considered bad performance, whilst above 10% is regarded as good performance.  Very few stations achieve over a 20% share.

Weekly Reach: This is quite simple.  It's how many people listen to a station for at least 5 minutes a week.  This is measured against the 15+ population (people aged 15 or older) and a percentage is taken.  Generally the higher the percentage, the better the performance, but there are many more factors in here when it comes to judging this.  In London, there are a large number of local radio stations broadcasting on AM, FM and DAB, as well as the national ones.  Whilst in somewhere like Cornwall, there is only the BBC local radio station and 2 ILRs to go with the nationals.  Guernsey and Jersey have only the local BBC station and one commercial station against the nationals.  And now with DAB, there are over 20 national radio stations, not the 8 we've been used to on AM and FM.  It does mean that making sense of the reach figures in a bit trickier.  However, for a local station, a reach below 10% is not good.  And even up to 15% probably indicates some improvement needed.

Basically to improve your overall performance, you need to reach as many people as possible, and once they're listening, get them to listen for longer.  It's not easy, but there are ways to be more successful at it.  I'll get into those methods in a future post.

I'll be ready at Midnight tonight to get the data release and analyse it myself to see what can be determined. 

 

Guernsey Elections 2012

Well, last night in Guernsey saw one of the more interesting and unpredictable elections we've had in a long time.  No political parties, 78 candidates vieing for 45 seats in 7 parishes in the States of Deliberation, Guernsey's political assembly.

Of the 45 previous deputies who had been in the States, 10 decided not to run again, so we were guaranteed 10 new deputies.  We got 22.  Almost half the seats went to new deputies.  And there were some high profile casualties including the Deputy Chief Minister and the Father of the House.

The fact that 6 of the 7 top polling candidates in this election were new deputies, also adds to the perception that the people of Guernsey, voted for change.

In fact, since the 2004 States, only 13 of those deputies remain.  Such radical voting patterns have not been seen before.  It's leaving even seasoned political observers somewhat surprised and baffled. 

Even the current Chief Minister, Lynden Trott, came close to losing his seat in the parish of St Sampson, as he came 6th out of the 11 candidates in the 6 seat parish, beating Jane Stephens by just 73 votes.

Can he claim a mandate to remain as Chief Minister?  You might think so when you consider the fact the Deputy Chief Minister did not retain his seat.  But coming in as the final elected deputy in St Sampson in 6th place?  Hardly a ringing endorsement from the voters.

May 1st is when we will find out who will become Chief Minister in the new States of Deliberation.  And there are two recounts happening Friday.

In the parish of Vale, the margin between success and failure was 42 votes, and the losing candidate there, James Symons, has asked for and been granted a recount.  But in St Peter Port North, the margin there between success and failure was just 3 votes.  Rhoderick Matthews could be the beneficiary there challenging Lester Queripel, although I imagine that Elis Bebb, who is just 7 votes ahead of Queripel, will also be watching with interest.

Hopefully we'll find out the results of the recount Friday afternoon.