Radio strategy ‘an injustice’ to BBC’s declining audience
AFORMER presenter on BBC Radio Wales has blamed the station’s loss of listeners on an attempt to turn it into a Welsh version of Radio 2.
The official radio audience monitoring body Rajar has published figures showing that in the third quarter of 2018 to the end of September, Radio Wales had its lowest listenership on record, with the average weekly reach being 317,000 – 12% of its potential audience.
In the same quarter in 2017, the comparable figure was 361,000 – 14% of the potential audience.
Mike Flynn, who presented a daily programme on the station for 11 years until 1989, told the Eye news website he had sent an email to Radio Wales editor Colin Paterson in which he suggested he should resign.
In his email, Mr Flynn said Mr Paterson had done an “injustice” to listeners by trying “to bring in a raft of B-list presenters with tenuous links to Wales in an effort to try and milk listeners from Radio 2”.
Mr Flynn is also concerned about the coverage by Radio Wales of events in north east Wales, particularly the decision to scrap most radio coverage of games by Wrexham Football Club.
He told Mr Paterson: “You have done an injustice to north east Wales listeners by axing weekly coverage of Wrexham AFC while finding funds to bring Janice Long in from Merseyside to present an evening off-peak programme no one listens to.
“Radio Wales has never served anywhere north of Cardiff with a dedicated daily pan-Wales service.”
He told Mr Paterson he had been recruited in 1978 because he came from Wrexham, “but was quickly informed that I would have to move to Cardiff to take up the offer of the prime mid-morning entertainment slot”.
In contrast to the audience decline for Radio Wales, the country’s commercial radio stations saw increases.
Listening figures rose at Capital South Wales over the third quarter in 2017 to the equivalent quarter in 2018 from 205,000 listeners per week to 210,000, at Heart South Wales from 471,000 to 482,000 and at Swansea Sound from 44,000 to 50,000.
Over the same period BBC Radio Ulster also showed a decline in audience, going down from a weekly reach of 572,000 to 539,000. The radio station serving Northern Ireland, however, has a significantly higher audience penetration than Radio Wales, with 36% of the potential audience being reached on a weekly basis even after the recent viewing figure decline.
Radio Scotland saw a decline from a weekly reach of 870,000 to 854,000, but retained its 19% proportion of the potential audience.
Over the same period the Welsh language station BBC Radio Cymru saw its weekly reach go down from 124,000 to 119,000 – both figures represent 5% of the potential audience.
A spokesperson for BBC Wales said: “We analyse these figures to ensure we continue to offer the best possible content for our audiences. Radio Wales is a vitally important part of BBC Wales’ provision and that’s why just this week we’ve extended the FM availability of Radio Wales to an extra 400,000 people”.
The spokesperson said the statistics were a “helpful snapshot of live listening”.