An
interesting survey about media in jordan was illustrated and announced by Irex Jordan lately.
You might have read a bit about it from Naseem Al-Tarawneh in
his post regarding how reading is dead in Jordan.
And i will be showing up some figures that are to bring attention in this report as far as radio industry is concerned.
Lets See!
1st of all, the amazingly low “listenership” was a title for the survey, as only 56.9% of those surveyed have listened to a radio within a week from the survey, and only 45.9% did the day before the survey.
Its quite true, and from my own personal observations, that less than half of the population listen to radio! Despite the fact of having all those radio stations in the airwaves. This is very obvious whenever you get in the shops around malls in commercial centers, where you'd find the people at the store playing, mostly, CREAPY MUSIC! That goes, many times, off the store or shop theme even! And not to forget how much of annoying thing is when you get a big shop for one of the brands where you'd find some low quality music, or a fashion shop with all sort of people from different ages getting into it with explicit-lyrics music playing in the background ... eu! Very ugly!
I guess the creapy taste of chain shops and stores in jordan are to be discussed in another post, because there is a lot of talking among that deep inside of me!
Now the next surprise is the ratings ... which are illustrated in the following figure (snapped from the report), for the past 7 days listening.
So despite all the fuss, the promotions, the branding, the shows, the “exclusive this – exclusive that”, the rating of the 4 private english-speaking radio stations in Jordan are at the bottom of the table!!!
Yes!
Even the so-called "eu! Not cool Radio station" among filthy rich listeners, Radio Jordan 96.3 FM is having the biggest rating among english speaking radio stations in Jordan. With an 0.7%, with ZERO promotions and prizes :) the station we have grown to learning english, is still the best way for the people to learn english! Despite the fact that his survey was taken during the worst period RJ 96.3 FM ever passed through.
Mood FM is following with an 0.6%, taking advantage of its exclusivity in style. To have a better rating than the 2 hit music stations, Play 99.6 & Beat FM, that came equally at 0.4%. To be finally followed with the what-i-like-to-call-careless Ahlen FM with 0.3%.
I mean! Even Radio Al-Balad (AmmanNet at the time of survey), that was suffering all the time (until last week) from major transmission problems that would prevent its proper airwaves distribution, got an 0.7% higher than all of them. I guess English speaking radio stations in jordan should think seriously about those stats, and reconsider their relation with the people out there!
On the other part of the sphere, Fann FM is still topping the list with 32.2%, followed by the very obviously listened-to Quran FM at 20.8%. Its amazing how Quran FM is stabilizing its position, and even climbing up the rating scale in this commercial radio stations war, and is still keeping quite a big gap with Hayat FM coming 7th with a 5.8%.
One of the observation also to be noted is that fact the state-owned Amman FM came prior to Radio Jordan Broadcasting's Main Service. Maybe this is to mean two indicators for the RJB, that their concentration on Amman FM is putting the station at a high rank (despite the fact that many people think Fann FM is Amman FM because of al-wakeel's show!), but at the same time The national public radio is not doing that well, when in other countries, like romania, the national public radio is on the top of the rank despite the existence of over 60 radio stations across the country.
Finally, I thought that Amen FM was to get a higher rating with all those Taxi drivers listening to it! I'm sure its rating at the time being is higher than it was at the time of this survey .... and where the hell did Melody FM get the 2.6% from!!!!
Last but not least, this interesting figure in the report appendix, shows how according to IPSOS Stats how more people listen to Radio than the ones reading Newspapers and Magazines all together! While when its to be compared to the ad-spent split, Newspapers and Magazines are eating 81% of the announcers money! In comparison with only 8% for the radio!
I guess this should be a good indicator for those commercial and promotions spenders at the big companies to rethink their minds about Radio Ads and promos!
