Marlow FM has more listeners than ever before!

If you’ve been listening to us recently - thank you! From Monday 15th February to Sunday 21st February, we had 2,334 unique online listeners*, our highest weekly number since records began.

If we look at the first seven weeks of this year, the average number of unique online listeners each day was 41% higher than the average number for the whole of 2020, and 113% higher than the average for the first seven weeks of that year.

We believe we can put this increase down to our coverage of lockdown services and the roll-out of the vaccines, some brilliant new presenters and shows, and some amazing guests. In recent weeks, we’ve been joined by John Glen, the director of more James Bond films than any other, Jill Nalder from It’s A Sin, whose real-life story the hit TV series was based on, and Bucks Fizz star Cheryl Baker. And, of course, loads of local people have been sharing their important stories with us.

Remember the numbers above are for online listeners only. We don’t have any over-the-air listening figures. We would need to join RAJAR, the official body in charge of measuring radio audiences in the UK, but this is prohibitively expensive for community radio stations like ours.

We do know that overall there are still more over-the-air listeners (AM/FM/DAB/DTV) than online listeners (phones/tablets/computers/smart speakers) - a commonly-accepted ratio is 4 to 1. So we know our total audience is much bigger than just those listening online.

According to the most recent data from RAJAR published on 14 May 2020, in an average week, digital listening accounts for 578 million hours, of which DAB has a 69% share, DTV 8%, and online 24%. Just over a quarter (27%) of over-15s claim to listen to live radio via a phone or tablet at least once a month.

We know more and more people are choosing to listen to our online stream on their phones and tablets, and our new app unveiled this week makes this much easier to do.

We do hope you continue to find our shows entertaining and informative. We intend to carry on bringing them to you. Ofcom, the regulator, has just renewed our FM licence for another five years in recognition of our service to the community.

Footnote

‘Unique online listeners’ are really unique internet addresses, and because more than one person will often be listening to the same online stream, the number of actual listeners is probably higher.