You might remember that VentnorBlog researched and revealed the amount of money that the County Press receives from the Isle of Wight Council for advertising.
The details are in our previous report, but, by way of a summary – over the period of ten years the County Press has been paid over £1.2m; in 2007-8 the CP received two thirds of all council ad spend and in 2008-09, the council was paying the CP an average of over £4,000 every single week of the year.
It’s taken a while to get round to doing it, but here are the details of who the council spends the second largest amount of advertising money with – Isle of Wight Radio.
Looking at Isle of Wight Radio payments
The thing that really jumps out from the numbers, is the huge growth in spend with IW Radio over the last three years that we have acquired details for.
In the year 2007-2008, the council paid £16,624.72 to IW Radio (IWR). (The council’s financial year runs April to April.)
We’re not sure what happened the next year, but the amount of money they received from the council nearly doubled (up 92%) to £31,844.30.
We directly asked the council if they had increased the amount of airtime they had bought, but they decided to not clearly answer the question, instead saying, “The council has purchased advertising commensurate with its decisions to promote certain campaigns.”
Payments tripled in three years
The upward rises in payments to IWR didn’t stop there. The next year saw an additional spend of nearly another 50% (46%) to £46,553.21 – adding about the same amount again.
Over those three years – 2007-10 – the amount the council paid to Isle of Wight Radio nearly tripled.
… While IWR audience at lowest point
What’s even more confusing is that over this period, the number of people listening to IW Radio dropped to its lowest level, as did the actual number of hours that were listened to.
Alongside this, it’s widely accepted that the cost of advertising on the radio dropped.
Despite this, 2009-2010 (to date) saw the council spending with the IW Radio rise to its highest-ever level – nearly £1,000 a week.
We posed this to both the council and IWR and didn’t receive a relevant response from either of them.
We’ll give you full access to the questions that we asked and the responses received shortly on VB..
The details
The numbers below are the amounts paid to Isle of Wight Radio by the council over ten years.
(to date)
2009-2010 £46,553.21
2008-2009 £31,844.30
2007-2008 £16,624.72
2006-2007 £13,596.69
2005-2006 (not disclosed by the council)
2004-2005 £23,407.42
2003-2004 £20,021.45
2002-2003 £26,988.50
2001-2002 £25,743.00
2000-2001 £16,948.50
Ten yr total £221,727.79
Graph showing last ten years of spending
