For the first time in 48 years of operation, RLV La Radio a Colori, a radio station headquartered in Levanto, a famous seaside resort along the Italian Riviera, 80 km east of Genoa, has carried out market research to obtain a reliable and objective figure showing the station’s users.
The station commissioned GDY Communication, an Ancona-based marketing and market research agency, to conduct election surveys, telephone interviews and opinion polls between Feb. 19 and April 10. The research area covered the 28 municipalities served by RLV’s FM signals.
The total resident population in the area is 58,232, of which 64% reported being radio listeners. In total, 10,646 people (18.3% of the resident population, almost one in five) said they listen to RLV La Radio a Colori. This is a very comforting figure for a hyper-local radio station.
Online activity
The surveys also examined engagement with the station’s social media and website, which showed a weekly average of 5,582 users of RLV’s online editorial content based on the individual platforms analyzed.
Thus, considering the 10,646 weekly on-air listeners and the 5,582 online contacts, RLV La Radio a Colori can boast a total of 16,228 weekly contacts, which RLV makes available to institutions, advertisers and associations wanting to reach the region’s residents and visitors.
“Having an accurate and objective idea of our audience was important,” said RLV’s founder Vito Monsellato. “Times change, and we try to keep up, but accurate data is needed to make sensible decisions. Aside from the satisfaction of good numbers, we also have valuable insights on approaching the next steps. We want to reach our first 50 years of radio in 2026 in perfect shape.
Vito Monsellato added, “We have the utmost respect and trust for official listening surveys, but we operate in an ‘interstitial’ area between La Spezia and Genoa and don’t serve the capitals. We felt that a survey tailored to our area could give us more timely and relevant information.”
RLV has significant competition. Two local and 11 national radio stations also serve its broadcast footprint. However, despite this, the surveys found that RLV was the second most listened-to brand weekly.
The other survey’s insights are that the station’s audience is predominantly male (60.61%) and over 45 (66.67%). Its listenership peaks in the morning, and while most listen to the station in the car or radio at home, about nine percent use apps and smartphones, eight percent use computers, and three percent use smart speakers.
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