Virgin Sees Podcast Success With Tim Lovejoy

Virgin Radio has hailed its latest online offering as a success after just two weeks, with the Tim Lovejoy Show rocketing into the top five podcasts in the iTunes chart.

The success of the Sunday afternoon sports show follows Virgin’s decision to offer it as a downloadable podcast last month, building on its first podcast exercise with The Pete & Geoff Breakfast Show in March (see Virgin Makes Podvertising First With Pete And Geoff).

The Tim Lovejoy Show has clocked up over 5,000 downloads so far, with the first show receiving 2,000 requests and the second receiving 3,500. This compares to an impressive 85,000 downloads every month for Pete and Geoff’s daily show.

Virgin states that the Tim Lovejoy Show currently receives more than 600 downloads each day, making the DJ and Sky Sports’ Soccer AM host one of the most popular voices for podcast listeners worldwide.

The Tim Lovejoy Show also marks Virgin’s second venture into ‘podvertising,’ whereby advertisers are offered unique ad slots on podcasts in order to fund the online operation.

Commenting on the success, Lovejoy said: “The show has kicked off with a bang and we’ve already had some fantastic guests including Roger Daltrey, Danny Murphy, Andy Reed and Razorlight with live music from Hard-Fi and The Ordinary Boys. The podcasting element’s fantastic with thousands downloading the show if they’re not around on Sunday afternoons. It’s great to be no. 5 in the charts but I’ve got my sights higher than that as the show gets even more popular in the next few months.”

Virgin Radio: 020 7434 1215 www.virginradio.co.uk