Masti Radio - Ofcom Licensing

Once established however, we are confident we can expand the market by eventually
persuading at least some of the large number of ethnic non-radio listeners to switch-on,
thereby increasing the audience to local commercial radio in Manchester too. And while
we readily accept our Year 2 and 3 reach projections would be unrealistic in a
‘mainstream’ radio market, because we are actually giving local Asians their first taste of
commercial local radio choice by launching only their second (dedicated) station, we are
convinced such ambitious projections are attainable.
Asian Audience Composition
Adopting the Rajar estimate that 85.5% of the Asian population is in the 15-44 age group
and bearing in mind we are primarily targeting 15-34’s, we think it reasonable to assume
around 90% of our audience will be aged under 45, of whom around 80% will be in the
15-34 target group.
Asian Listening Hours Projections
Once again, our original researches revealed large differences between the Rajar
estimate of 21.12 hours (total listening) per Asian listener per week (just 3 hours per
listener per week less than the all-adult average at the time), and the 9 hours per listener
per week average outlined in our own initial research study (see Section 6 Evidence of
Demand for details). This finding was backed-up by our most recent study which found
that although the majority of young Asian radio listeners tend to listen every day, far
more said they did so for under an hour than for 1-3 hours, or longer.
Taking a similar view to the one we used in relation to weekly reach predictions, our
initial 10 weekly average hours per listener would be the maximum proportion you’d
expect out of (say) 15 hours total listening, but comfortable in relation to a total of 21
hours. But given that many of our research respondents said they would listen to the
radio for longer in order to accommodate our station we feel our prediction is attainable,
even in the face of our own evidence that total weekly listening is currently relatively low,
certainly by comparison with the population as a whole.
In years two and three the growth in our average hours is shown to be very modest to
compensate for large incremental jumps in weekly reach, even though the likelihood is
that the market will expand once we are in it, as our research suggests.
Forecasting Asian Listening Hours by Age Group
Listening hours are apportioned in a similar way to weekly reach, though percentages
are further adjusted to take account of the likelihood of longer listening hours among the
younger sector of our overall audience, particularly 15-24’s.
Audience Reach Predictions for Black, Chinese and White Listeners
These are based on the results of our July 2006 survey in which we asked respondents
from each group how likely they would be to listen regularly to Masti Radio.
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