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Radio Access And Listenership In Ghana

The results from the AudienceScapes 2009 Survey in Ghana indicate that radio is the most widely accessible and the most widely used source of news and information for Ghanaians.

Ninety percent of respondents said they had listened to the radio in the last week, and virtually all of those respondents (96 percent) also said they use the radio to get news and information on at least a weekly basis, as opposed to just listening for entertainment.

The survey results show radio broadcasts are also widely trusted as news and information sources (Chart 1), suggesting that, overall, radio is a favorable conduit for delivering development information in Ghana, at least on a national scale.

Chart 1
             

Nearly all radio listeners (defined as people who said they listened to the radio within the last year) said they tuned in to FM stations regularly (in the last week). A substantial minority had listened to the radio via mobile phone—far more than had used even AM or shortwave radio signals—highlighting the fact that new technologies are used frequently to access older media (Table 1).

Table 1


When asked about particular outlets, Peace FM was mentioned by the largest number of respondents nationally as one of the three stations they listen to most often (Chart 2). The radio market is active and diverse, however, and many of the top-10 stations were only mentioned by between 5 and 10 percent of respondents.

Chart 2
         

From a demographic perspective, women were slightly more likely than men to mention Peace FM, while women were less likely to mention Angel, Radio Gold, and Joy FM (Chart 3). 

Chart 3
    

Older respondents were more likely to mention Obuoba and Nhyira than younger people, while Adom and Peace FM were cited more frequently among younger Ghanaians than those over 45.

More striking than age and gender, however, were notable location-based and geographic differences: as Chart 3.4 shows, rural residents were less likely to mention most of the top outlets but they were nearly twice as likely as urban residents to mention Savannah, a state-owned station based in Tamale, Northern Region, and Obuoba, based in Nkawkaw, Eastern Region.

Chart 4
    

Chart 5 attests to the regional diversity of the radio audience, even when the analysis is restricted to only the most mentioned stations. Notably, Peace and Adom’s great popularity is driven by respondents from the Greater Accra, Eastern, and Central regions, while the respondents mentioning Nhyira, Hello, Fox, and Angel were all predominantly from the Ashanti Region. No respondents from the Upper West region mentioned any of the 10 stations that were most widely cited nationally, perhaps because broadcasts of those nationally-popular stations do not reach that relatively remote corner of the country. [1]

Chart 5
    

[1] The Upper West Region is remote from the coast and capital, and faces numerous development challenges even when compared to other parts of Ghana. The 2008 Ghana Living Standards Survey, produced by the Ghana Statistical Service, provides regional breakdowns of numerous socio-economic indicators and highlights the Upper West Region’s relatively underdevelopment. http://www.statsghana.gov.gh/docfiles/glss5_report.pdf