Radio Plymouth - Ofcom Licensing

RADIO PLYMOUTH
Our research shows that they don’t hear the music they like – so they tune elsewhere and don’t hear
the news they need.
Conclusions for Radio Plymouth
We will make sure that our national and regional coverage is comprehensive and that editorial
decisions are made in light of what is important to our listeners. Local for its own sake isn’t good
enough. But as our focus groups suggested, a local angle on a national story is attractive.
Music policy
“Good music” is the single most important reason for people to choose a new service (61%). But
what defines music as “good”? It’s a subjective question and not one that we believe is usefully
answered by standard reference to the decade in which a track is released. Even anecdotally, very
few people define their musical tastes by decade. Genres are more prevalent.
But there’s something about “good music” which is harder to define. Nevertheless, we set out to do
so!
Firstly, we asked which radio station played the music people prefer. Although BBC Radio 2 came
out top, there are significant differences between age groups. Plymouth Sound is the music station
of choice for people under 24, though it falls out of favour fast at this point, particularly for men. But
by and large, together with Radio 1, it performs well for under 35s. Classic FM topped the list for
just a handful of respondents. Our conclusion is that people want mainstream music and, as they
get older, a wider choice. As listening to Plymouth Sound falls away, Radio 2 benefits but so does
Pirate FM. What is it that makes someone in Plymouth think Plymouth Sound isn’t for them, but that
Pirate FM will fill the gap? Clearly, it’s not an aversion to commercial radio.
We decided to delve further into musical tastes, but not adopt an approach of defining music by
decades. To us, this is a somewhat narrow methodology leading to predictable music programming.
It was also contrary to our developing philosophy that a new station should define itself not by age
but by feel.
So we asked respondents their view about artists in categories that were a combination of genres
and chronology. For example, we asked about Classic Rock, a genre, but also about “Artists that
span the decades” – those stars such as Elton John, the Rolling Stones, U2 or Paul McCartney that
have had popular success in the 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s, and in this millennium. The decade doesn’t
matter; the artist, or the spirit of enduring music, does.
Most of our categories, but not all, were of interest to more than 50% of respondents, with higher
appreciation among 35-54 year olds. Those that were are shown in the next table.
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