the community radio toolkit

> When we do not know how many people listen to a station, how can we say it is serving the community?

It’s impossible to tell how many people are listening “on the airwaves”, but if you’re doing internet streaming you can get exact numbers there. And you should be able to get some clues from the number of people who respond to your competitions etc.

Of course, there’s no magic “fudge factor” that you can apply to competition entrants or to number of requests to work out your exact audience, but you should at least be able to tell whether anyone is listening.

If anyone makes contact, ask them whether they were listening on-air or online. If you know the ratio of on-air to online, and know the number of online listeners, it’s easy to estimate the number of on-air listeners. It’s not an exact science – the poll is probably skewed towards internet listeners if an email response is received – but it gives hints.

And if anyone – even just one person – is listening, then you are “serving the community” – that person IS your community of listeners.

As to a few people being “de facto stars”, due to shortage of volunteers – it’s a difficult one. Some people will, due to their circumstances, have much more free time than others. If they choose to commit that free time to the station, that’s great. And if you need someone to “fill a gap”, it’s always easier to ask one of your established team rather than bring in someone new. But we must always be careful that we don’t take the easiest route, as it may exclude new volunteers.

One thing to look at is perhaps which way the station is going.
Is the connection with the community getting better or worse? Are there increasing numbers of volunteers or do you lose more than you gain? Are you starting to fight to stay alive rather than fighting to grow?
Is the culture of the station outgoing, constantly looking for opportunities to broaden appeal, or is it inward looking, more concerned with finance, volunteer and technical problems than anything else? Is it really a Community Station or just a club for people who want to make radio?

One set of answers gives you a station worth fighting for, the other maybe a reason to look elsewhere, or to stop and start all over again.

One thing that almost no-one ever says about CR is that it can be awful at times. It can be badly run, it can be an excuse for a few to be “personalities” and it can be a waste of money.

It can also be a wonderful experience, a voice for the people, a force for change and all those good things.

All down to those involved really…..

From my work in commercial radio I can tell you that LOCAL advertisers are not particularly influenced by the formal audience research anyway. What gets them coming back is simply whether the advertising campaigns work – do they influence people to change their habits?
There is every reason why we should judge a community radio station in the same way. Does it make things happen/change attitudes in its target community? If people fell the benefit of being on the station they will support it. Every community station should know what it is for – what is its social purpose – and it should be judged against achieving any of that.
On your second point, many voluntary stations make the mistake of expanding the schedule every time a new volunteer comes along. You end up with a small team thinly spread, with each member having “their” slot. I don’t know if this helps in your case – but its better to have fewer daily programmes, maybe just one or two, each with a team working on them and different presenters taking turns or co-presenting. In part this is because it helps to introduce new part-timers into the system who would never see themselves “going solo” on the air to start with.
And don’t worry about it being a waste of money – radio is a very powerful social tool if used well. You just have to be clear why you are making programmes…