Why it’s important to get the facts right
Aday of real celebration this time last week at the Newstalk ZB headquarters. The year’s first ratings results were in and we were up. In fact, we had reached an audience the size of which Newstalk had never before achieved.
Another survey was out at the same time . . . AUT’s Research Centre for Journalism Media and Democracies work into media trust.
New Zealand’s media scored a 48, which was down overall and indicated that 52 per cent of New Zealanders, in other words the majority, don’t trust what they see, read, and hear.
Tying these two results in, to perfectly give us an insight as to why things are the way they are, was an article on Stuff on the aforementioned radio ratings.
To me, it was a mixed piece of vitriol, snark and inaccuracy.
The first two aspects didn’t bother me, I was the partial star of the article and a lot of smack is written about me so a bit more wasn’t of any consequence (say whatever you like about me, I stopped caring about 25 years ago).
But here’s the claim that needs addressing and correcting.
Once it had waded through a theory about demographics, the article arrived at a startling claim.
“Newstalk ZB’s numbers shifted very little in any audience bracket in either share or listenership.” Wrong.
“That tells us while Newstalk ZB’s audience, most of them over 55 are loyal, the station is not gaining much new audience and the one it has is not commercially desirable.”
Wrong again.
The station overall increased its audience by more than 29,000 people. That’s essentially Forsyth Barr Stadium, packed with new listeners.
The Mike Hosking Breakfast