After eighteen months without official statistics, the company responsible for compiling audience figures have published the latest set of results. Radio Essex continues to expand the number of listeners across all platforms. The counties only independent commercial station continues to draw in over one hundred thousand listeners every week clocking up an incredible 634k listening hours.
Radio legends Martin & Su who joined the station just before the pandemic hit have added two thousand listeners to their long running breakfast show. The pair recently broadcast from Barbados, rounding the week off by sending two lucky people on an all expenses paid holiday to the resort that hosted them. After two decades of waking up the people of Essex, both Martin and Su said; “We are over the moon to have achieved our second highest listening figures at the station”
With the youngest listener demographic in the county, its no surprise that both Conor Knight and Jack Burke have given the station their largest share of the audience in the ‘Workday’ slot.
Jack who was promoted from overnights and Conor who moved from evenings have seen their share of listeners increase, along with the average age drop to the youngest amongst the station’s local competitors.
Radio stalwart Chris Brooks and pop-star Scott Robinson’s ‘Big Drive Home’ has held a steady audience, considering most of the county was working from home. They continued to bring their unique brand of humour to the airwaves whilst keeping Essex up to date with the latest pandemic related news. Unusually for hit music station, the guys were joined by newsreader Stevie Shillinglaw as the county tried to make sense of daily briefings from government ministers. Chris Brooks said, “We tried to keep people up to date, while also making them laugh, which is what radio is all about”
Comedians Ross McGrane and John Oaks who host ‘Weekend Breakfast’ have doubled their audience over the period since the last figures. With the ‘rhyming celebrity name game’ and ‘who’s side are you on’ the guys wake the county up every weekend and this shows in the listener interaction which continues to smash station records.
The other big news from today’s announcement is Marky T’s Sunday night show is matching Heart Essex in terms of listeners, which for an independent station is quite the achievement. Marky who also DJs in clubs across the county said, “I’m just trying to round the weekend off in style”.
Managing Director Maxine Bean has welcomed today’s news by telling reporters; “These are a fantastic set of figures and I’m immensely proud of the whole team who have pulled together over a global pandemic to keep Essex informed and entertained”