Wednesday, February 22, 2012

Spirit attracting more listeners than expected

Ireland's first Christian radio station is attracting listeners at a level way beyond their expectations.

Spirit, which began broadcasting a year ago, recently commissioned two companies, Ask Chili and Red C to conduct surveys on their behalf.  

They asked two questions, “Do you listen to Spirit Radio?”  and, “Did you listen to Spirit Radio in the past week?”

Ask Chili’s survey was nationwide, across three provinces of Ireland, so that it captured listenership to the station coming not only from Dublin, but also from the other cities where Spirit is available, Galway, Cork, Limerick and Waterford.  

It found 7% were listening to Spirit.

The Red C poll was conducted in Dublin alone, and it established an 11% listenership.

When Spirit originally made its pitch to the Broadcasting Authority of Ireland (BAI) for the licence, it was projecting a listenership of 1% after one year, 2% after two, rising to 5% after five years.  

At all times the station saw itself as a niche station.

“It is fabulous news for us.  The figures far exceeded our hopes for the first year,” Dr Carole Brown, speech content editor at the station, told ciNews. 

However, she understood the shortcomings of the poll which was on a small sample and which named the station. 

"Had the poll asked an open ended question like, 'Which radio station do you listen to?' there would probably have been a different outcome.”

JNLR, which assesses the rankings of all the main radio stations nationally, uses such questions, and surveys  a much larger market segment, however Spirit was not in a position to engage JNLR this year due to the high costs involved. 

Nonetheless, the poll findings are very encouraging, indicating that the station could be attracting up to 100,000 listeners.

Spirit Radio won the Christian radio licence, and went on the air in late January 2011.  

According to Brown, 2011 was a year of growing pains. 

“Some of the broadcasters had a lot of experience but needed to combine this with a faith element. Others had faith, but no broadcasting experience.”

The most popular programme on Spirit continues to be Rojo in the morning.  

In addition, many young people are listening to the late night chat show from 10:00pm to midnight. 

“There is a lot of interaction from young people on Facebook and texting us on the late night programme,” remarked Brown.  

Other features like the short testimonies, the scriptural quote after the news and the Focus on the Family Sunday morning slot, are all proving to be popular.

Spirit’s main hope for 2012 is to stabilise the station financially.  

Currently it has a staff of 24, seven of whom are paid, the rest volunteers. 

It pays the rent on the sites for the masts, for satellite, royalties on music, the network news service as well as the normal costs of running a business like phone, electricity and stationery charges.  

The station relies on listenership support.  

It has hundreds who contribute regularly by standing order, but it needs about two thousand. 

“We need more regular supporters as well as help from major donors,” said Brown.  

Apart from stabilising the finances, the station wants just to keep pumping out its positive Christian ‘passion for life’.

“We need to get back to basics.  If we don’t promote a relationship with Jesus, none of the rest will make any sense.”