If you took five minutes out to answer the Boom Radio survey in our last newsletter – many thanks.  Your views are very much appreciated.

We’ve all been in the radio business much of our lives at a huge variety of stations – getting some things right and other things wrong!  We hope our instinct is painfully very well-tuned on most things – and Boom is certainly a station which sprang from the heart, with a passion to create something very different and special. But right from before the launch, we’ve always done our best to check our instincts with a variety of research projects

The verdicts from our listener surveys are always highly encouraging. We are cheered by the love for Boom which shines through – but it’s good just to check that the levels of approval are not diminishing. They don’t seem to be! Thank you.

Whilst we pride ourselves on being pretty open about things (hence this post!), we don’t publish the detail of the results as that would be unfair to our team – but we’re happy to share some broad findings.

For example, the last survey reassured us that the general mix of music eras is about right according to the overwhelming majority of listeners. You really welcomed the range of music, with very, very few listeners suggesting it was ‘too old’ or ‘too young’ for them.

Whilst a few people suggested we are playing more newer records these days – about the same small proportion said we’re playing more older records!  You can see the challenge! Rest assured the mix of eras in our general programming is about the same as it always has been – and we’ve always included a dash of new music.

All our surveys confirm that the vast majority of listeners feel we play a lot of surprises and don’t play songs too often - or play too much unfamiliar music. That’s good to see – as our approach remains consistent and our music library is larger than it’s ever been.

We say ‘every song’s a surprise’ because you never know what it’s going to be – and every single hour of music is painstakingly arranged by hand, with the computer back up helping to remind us of what we’ve played when. Of course, if you listen a lot, you will hear some surprises again! 

It’s always interesting to hear what you feel about our presenters - given each of our team has a different style and personality – and our presenters do chat a little more than on other stations. But we like to know we’re all providing more smiles and interest than annoying you. And we seem to be.

Any commercial radio station will have comments on the advertising – so it’s good to hear from most surveys we’ve done that most listeners acknowledge we play many fewer ads than most stations. The amount has ebbed and flowed over the last five years, but we adopted a ceiling when we launched and we’ve not breached that policy.

Some listeners find the ‘small print’ annoying at the end of some commercials – the garbled terms and conditions – and we understand that.  It’s largely outside our control as such campaigns are usually carried by many stations, but we agree with you! Whilst consumer protection is important, we’re not persuaded that these sorts of warnings serve much purpose – and we’ve made our voice heard on the matter too.

Thanks, by the way, if you helpfully answer the questions at the end of our surveys which are not about us – but about other lifestyle matters. As we say clearly before that section, the overall answers are useful in helping us attract press coverage or in making a case to a possible advertising sector.    We do say that the questions are voluntary – and given you don’t tell us who you are, no company can ever get in touch with you about what you’ve said.

For the record, it was fascinating to learn that

Thanks again for your time and support. It is much appreciated.