Press Release issued: 2 October 2012.
Our multi award-winning radio station based in Glasgow has announced it now has over 119,000 listeners per week and plans to expand its reach even further.
Insight Radio, set up in 2006 by the charity RNIB as Europe's first radio station for blind and partially sighted people, broadcasts from its headquarters in Partick, with satellite studios in Edinburgh, London and Cardiff.
Since then, Insight has been nominated in the 'Best Digital Radio Station' category at the Freesat Awards, and has already won a silver prize in the 2007 Sony Radio Academy Awards (the radio industry Oscars), receiving praise for "some of the most moving and well-produced human interest content the judges had heard in a long time."
Listeners in Glasgow can tune in on 101FM. The station also broadcasts nationally via its website and on Sky 0188 and Freesat 777.
So successful has Insight Radio proved, it now intends to launch a new 24-hour speech-based service online, Insight Extra. Radio services manager Ross Macfadyen said: "Insight Extra will be like our 'red-button' service and will carry full-length interviews and features about sight loss as well as more long-form material; books, magazines, conference coverage, etc.
"Through our research, and by listening to anecdotal evidence, we
know there is an appetite for this kind of additional service, which will exist as an add-on to what we do on FM and across the digital platforms. We expect Insight Extra to attract a new audience, which can only be a good marketing tool for the main station which will remain the focus of our work and attention."
Commenting on the latest audience figures, Macfadyen added: "We have increased the reach and awareness of Insight Radio by 16 per cent, up from 102,000 to 119,180 per week since last year. We've already received some very interesting and new comments from our listeners about what they like, don't like, want and don't want."
Macfadyen, however, is keen to emphasis that Insight Radio is for everyone. "Our programmes offer easily accessible, up to the minute information covering current news, sport, entertainment, talking books and social opportunities, as well as a wide range of issues affecting the blind and partially sighted community," he insists.
Many of the station's producers and presenters, themselves, have sight problems.
Jill Daley produces and presents her own magazine show, 'The Daley Lunch'. Jill lost her sight through diabetes at the age of 19 but went on to study sound engineering and media studies at university. "With today's technology, I can't see any reason why more blind or partially sighted people shouldn't get the opportunity to work," she said. "Insight Radio challenges the myth that people with sight loss can't participate and contribute just the same as their sighted counterparts."
In 2010, Gary Moritz, another Insight presenter, won a Finalist's Certificate in the New York Festivals International Radio Programming and Promotion Awards - despite having never worked in radio until a year ago.