MRG Evening Meeting – The Relaunch of Radio 4

When James Boyle became controller of Radio 4 in September 1996, he decreed that research was “to be at the heart of the network: nothing is sacred.” However, as the subsequent research discovered, many of the station’s listeners would argue completely the reverse, that Radio 4 is indeed very sacred. Therein lies the challenge for the researchers and schedulers at Radio 4: how to alter the schedule to attract new listeners and get people to listen for longer without alienating the hardcore, longstanding and loyal R4 listener.

At the Media Research Group (MRG) evening meeting on 30 September, Radio 4’s broadcast analyst David Bunker and Alison Lyon, MD of Counterpoint Research, explained how they conducted and analysed the R4 audience research project.

Opening the meeting, Bunker explained how Radio 4 is based around built programmes or programme units which means that it broadcasts around 200 different programmes every week. This, he says, makes it more similar to television than other radio stations. This means that the Radio 4 audience listens to the station in a different way than it might another radio station. Because of this Boyle’s schedule task was particularly tricky to get right, and the research, according to Lyon, was difficult to conduct.

The research was split into quantitative and qualitative periods. In January 1997 the quantitative research began and between April and May the qualitative studies were completed. The new schedules finally began in April 1998 and the station now reaches around 8 million people a week. The slots which receive the most loyal and regular listeners are news programmes and The Archers.

The average age of a R4 listeners is gradually increasing and is currently around 55. In terms of image, regular listeners described the station as stimulating, informative, intellectual, reliable and so on; non regular listeners, on the other hand, were more likely to use adjectives like serious, boring and old to describe Radio 4.

Data for the studies were drawn from RAJAR, Daily Life and Millward Brown, much of which was analysed by Telmar. R4 listeners were found to also listen to Radio 2, BBC Local Radio and (to a lesser extent) Classic FM and Independent Local Radio. The qualitative research was conducted by splitting the schedule into five day-parts and targeting heavy, light and occasional listeners. A typology of listeners was constructed:

• Planners – very restricted to change, seek out and plan to listen to programmes, opposed to even the research itself let alone changes to the stations structure or content, very passionate, reject rationalisations, think ratings are irrelevant
• Addicts – rather have speech than music, like daily mental stretch, love the tone of R4, trust it implicitly, relaxed about change
• Dippers – (largest group) promiscuous and value eclecticism, alone, robust and alert, no planning of listening, think that change is overdue

The day-parts were then discussed separately and it was found that some of the morning programmes were felt to be a little too heavy-going for that time of day, an example being The Moral Maze. Late mornings required a bit of humour according to the respondents and From Our Own Correspondent was highly regarded. Evenings were also associated with comedy.

To summarise the findings Bunker said that there was definitely a mandate for change despite stalwart opposition from the Planners. The ability of the audience to know the schedule was deemed an important issue as it was discovered that many Radio 4 listeners often did not really know what was on and when. Allied to this, then, Radio 4 had make sure that it was always aware of its listeners. It was also felt that the pace and texture of the schedule should be varied.

The new schedule, then, was aimed at retaining the cornerstones of Radio 4 programming whilst re-jigging a little in order to carry listeners through the day. More ‘intuitive’ start and finish times have been introduced and attention has been paid to the ‘hammocks’ (troughs) in listening figures in order to ‘level the line’.

The station was given a new and coherent identity and a listener pack was sent out to 25,000 people, on request. The schedule changes were plugged in the press and television and a website was created which holds programmes listings information. In the Q2 RAJAR figures, lunchtime was down a bit, but everything else was pretty stable, says Bunker. The responses so far have been more ‘like’ than ‘dislike’ but the ‘dislikes’ are increasing a little. ‘Mixed feelings’ is the main category.

Reactions are being monitored all the time and reaction indexes (RIs) are being calculated. More qualitative research is due to take place this month. However, despite all these efforts, Bunker predicts that the station is still in for a ‘rocky’ RAJAR Q3.