OFCOM character of service sheets

Looking at the OFCOM website, I noticed a section that included all the current commercial radio licenses for existing radio stations.

Initially, I looked at a number of different licences from a range of completely different radio stations to get and idea of who the audience for that radio station was and the type of music played on each station.

The first character of serives sheet I looked at was for Classic FM. Here, the audience for the station is not defined in terms of ages or gender, but rather is described as 'the listeners interested in the music being played'. The type of music played on the radio station appears to be a mixture of histoical classical music and more contemporary classical music from the theatre and film. This station broadcasts to a national audience. Looking at the figures for Classic FM for RAJAR, I was quite surprised to find how popular Classic FM is with over 5 and a half million listeners for the period between September and December 2013.

KISS, in contrast, identifies the age of its target audience as under 30's and states that the genre of music broadcast on the station is contemporary dance music - within that genre, the station is commited to giving over at least 36 per week to specialist sub-genres of music. The potential audience for KISS is much smaller than Classic FM as it services the London area (with approximately 7 million potential listeners).

Wessex FM is described as a radio station that targets a relatively small, local community and as a station that has a 'strong commitment to local news'. On the character of service sheet, there is no mention of the age of the target audience which immplies that it is aimed at everyone in the Weymouth and Dorchester area. The type of music the station plays is vaguely described as 'broad'. This radio station serves a far smaller population just over 1,00,000 listeners. According to the RAJAR website, nearly 40% of potential listeners tune in to the radio station - this is a far greater percentage than either Classic FM or KISS and reflects just how important local radio stations are to the community they serve.

Absolute Radio serves the whole of the United Kingdom and is described as playing both new and classic music from the rock genre. The target audience in terms of age runs from the mid 20's to the mid 40's and it reflected in the fact that the station is committed to playing older tracks. The figures on the RAJAR website suggests that only 3% of the potential audience listen to Absolute Radio - this is possibly a result of it playing music that only appeals to a niche audience.

The last radio station  I looked at on Ofcom is Gold (London). This radio station targets the audience in the London area and the music that is played on the station is described as 'classic pop'. This genre of music directly influence the age of the target audience who are much older than I have found on other radio stations (35 - 54 years old).

Once I had decided what kind of radio station I wanted to produce, I looked at the character of service sheet for Capital Radio, a station that is similar to mine. Capital, like my station, services the London area and plays modern chart music for people under the age of 40.