ADVICE – ALWAYS READ THE TERMS & CONDITIONS OF A COMPETITION YOU ARE ENTERING ON THE RADIO

 I was listening to Jaz and Laura on Spin 1038's Zoo Crew yesterday evening (14/09/2021) enjoying the music and the banter, then they announced a text competition for a prize of € 20,000. The question posed was fairly simple,

‘What country does ABBA hail from, Sweden or South Africa?’

I sat at a set of traffic lights and momentarily considered pulling over and dispatching a text entry but HOLD ON A MINUTE!!!

 

Each text entry would cost me an expensive € 2.50 plus the standard message rate of your provider. In a period of tight financial constraints that seemed excessive for a local radio station, so let’s take a moment to drill into the competition.

 

The competition was not aimed at just the listeners of Spin 1038 (Dublin) but also at the Go Loud stable of stations owned by Bauer Media. This competition was being aired over Spin 1038, Spin Southwest, 98 FM and national stations Newstalk and Today FM for the period 13^th – 17^th September 2021. In the last pre-covid JNLR figures issued the weekly listenership figures for those 5 stations was 2,336,000[1]. That equates to less than 3% of Spin 1038 listeners who would have to text an entry for the €20,000 to be recouped and a profit made. If that is applied across all the Go Loud stations and 3% of all listeners entered this easy to answer competition then € 175,000 would be generated for the company less costs.  (1% of all Bauer Ireland listeners entering would generate €58,400 for the radio company)

 

Bauer Media has taken over the portfolio of Communicorps stations but according to their track record on Trust Pilot with a rating of 1.4/5 leads perhaps a word of advice is required,

ADVICE – ALWAYS READ THE TERMS & CONDITIONS OF A COMPETITION YOU ARE ENTERING ON THE RADIO

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[1] Today FM 877,000 – Newstalk 804,000 – Spin 1038 275,000 – 98FM 231,000 – Spin South West 149,000