Radio X

Radio X is a DAB radio station owned by Global based in Leicester Square in London. Licensed by Ofcom, it focuses on rock, indie and alternative music. Initially launched as xfm in 1992, Radio X is a rebrand of xfm when it launched back in September 2015. The station features many popular presenters with the likes of Chris Moyles, Vernon Kay, Johnny Vaughan and Ricky Wilson presenting.

Radio X has a market share of 1.1% with a total of listeners per week at 1.58 million making it the 16th most listened to radio station in the UK. Its listeners listen on average 7.4 hours every week beating rival station BBCR1 average listenership per week at around 6 hours. The target audience of Radio X is around the 15-40 mark with this being evident in their 78% listenership being between the 15-44 age range. According to RAJAR, the station is more popular with males with the male to female ratio being at 61% to 39%. The younger feel to the station is evident with the ways the presenters talk and the features they include.

The style of presenting is really fast and upbeat and is perfect for the younger audience it wants to draw in. The presenters use a mix of great specialist music knowledge on this alternative genre with a crunch and roll style of link to achieve informative, fast links between the music. According to (Starkey 2004) "Increasingly, the music scheduled on individual stations and the key high-profile presenters who play it are seen as part of a brand. Marketing theorists usually consider that branding is one of the key elements in selling any product from insurance to tinned beans to potential customers." I really enjoy this station as it's a really unique station to listen to compared to stations focusing more on your typical chart music. The fact it is owned by a huge company, Global, helps it get that huge reach and listenership too. (Starkey, 2004) states that "Marketing is vitally important to commercial stations, which derive their income from advertising, and so need as large an audience as possible to effectively sell on to their advertisers." Online presence and digitalisation is vital to the station too as it reaches great numbers using social media too with an especially strong presence on Facebook and Instagram. Their website (linked below) has a lot of listener interaction there too with tabs including quizzes, listen live, win, artist profiles, festival guides and podcasts too. Across the show interviews, competitions and live stream promotions are mentioned a lot, another great way to keep the viewers interested and involved.  Music knowledge is so essential to the presenters on this station with it being specialist and with a mix of excellent knowledge, preparation and producing, the presenters make their knowledge seem effortless. The presenters draw the listeners to both their website and social media throughout the day which is really good so they are getting listeners to view their different platforms.

A piece of content I really enjoyed was when Chris Moyles did an outside broadcast from a rollercoaster while on it and it was a really funny piece of content. There are also other clips from it used online too, used as promotional clips on the station too. I really also enjoy the live sets from artists too, they are featured most days on the station and repeats of the live sets are also played sometimes too to add a bit variation into the station. I think the only downside I can think of when it comes to programming is that across the day the music is all very varied. If the station had a specialist alternative show every night that would help divide the genre further compared to it just being a mix across the wide genre all day. The fact the station doesn't air the Big Top 40 show on a Sunday is a really good move too, with that show being aired on Capital, the same building and network as Radio X this could have been a really easy option for the station to make rather than hiring another presenter in that 4-7pm slot so I think that's a great decision that isn't included on the station. I think overall the station is really well-presented, well-represented online and the music played is something really unique on the radio.


https://www.radiox.co.uk/


References

• Starkey, G. (2004) Radio in Context. New York: Palgrave Macmillan