More Radio Ga Ga

Our Editor, Welshman Phil Parry (who spent seven years presenting programmes at RW) has been left reeling by the numbers. He hosted the lunchtime programme, Wales at One (WaO), the drive-time show Good Evening Wales (GEW), as well as the weekly debate series People’s Assembly (PA), and was aghast: “These figures are truly shocking”, he said.

 

He added: “clearly they are doing something VERY wrong. Why are the audience statistics in other areas so much better?!”.

Our journalists have been alone in reporting that the previous RW Editor, Colin Paterson had an affair with the presenter Lucy Owen, and the story about it was included in a Digital Spy (DS) comment concerning the station with the message above the link saying “…the record low listening figures at Radio Wales under it’s (sic) current management (were) amplified this year by criticism from former award winning reporters and presenters”. The present RW Editor has also hit the headlines for all the wrong reasons. 

Previous abysmal numbers came out as Carolyn Hitt assumed her unenviable position as its head, and outraged listeners, said the output was “inane” as well as a “self-parody”

Perhaps emphasising the recent difficulties, the headline-grabbing former ‘Director of Content and Services’ Rhuanedd Richards, had earlier described the then new ‘Editor of BBC Radio Wales and Sport’, Ms Hitt, as a “brilliant addition to the team”.

But in the eulogy to her she failed to mention that homosexuality is unlawful in the host nation of the football World Cup, Qatar, where Wales qualified, and Ms Hitt transmitted match details on RW.

Being gay carries a punishment of up to three years in prison there, as well as earning the possibility of the death penalty for Muslims under sharia law. Also conspicuous by its absence in Ms Richards’ praising speech, was that Ms Hitt had also said in the past on Twitter (now X) that she votes for the Welsh nationalist party Plaid Cymru (Plaid), and is prepared to “pick up the ball” for independence, when the news service she is overseeing is meant to be neutral.

Ms Hitt is herself gay, which may have made it difficult monitoring coverage of matches there.

Past years have been almost as bad for RW.

In 2020 the equivalent statistics revealed a slight increase on the previous year, but a substantial drop compared with two years earlier, a massive decrease on the year before that, and how more than 40,000 listeners had been lost in one three month period, despite the cash spent on new schedules.

They also showed that the total listening hours were 2,667,000, down from 3,074,000 in September 2019 (although up from 2,147,000 in December 2018).

A former RW executive, told The Eye at the time a previous quarter’s atrocious listening figures were released that: “It’s (the audience numbers are) peaking at weekdays mid mornings, with Wynne Evans (now disgraced and sacked from the airwaves) the only highlight. There’s an over reliance on celebrities who have little or no substance, and the breakfast programme is a disgrace”.

One of the main presenters at RW during its launch, re-stated his call for the people in charge to resign. Mike Flynn said: “I would like to know what the real figures are across daytimes and weekends and how they waste over £18 million. It is about time they started to answer a few questions.”

Unfortunately we know some of the latest figures today – and they don’t look good…

 

Details of Phil’s astonishing decades-long journalistic career (including his years at the BBC), as he was gripped by the rare and incurable neurological condition Hereditary Spastic Paraplegia (HSP), have been released in an important book ‘A GOOD STORY’. Order it now.