How the radio industry target audiences ft Womans hour

​For seven decades BBC Radio 4’s Woman’s Hour has charted a social and political revolution in women’s lives – covering everything from backstreet abortions and the introduction of the pill to the fight for the Equal Pay Act.

​Garvey, who has presented the show alongside Murray for nine years, told the Guardian that a glance at the script from the first ever show – which featured a section on how to “put your best face forward” – revealed the vast shift in women’s lives in the past 70 years.

With 3.7 million listeners weekly, Woman’s Hour is now the second most popular daily podcast across BBC Radio – after The Archers – and a quarter of its listeners are under 35, while 40% are male.

 The show remains, according to guest presenter Emma Barnett, “the Rolls Royce of Radio 4 … It’s a programme that brings out the best in people as they know they have the space to share deep feelings with an incredibly engaged audience hanging on their every word,” she said. “Its listeners, male and female, trust it implicitly and the female gaze [through which] it reflects the world is invaluable and unique.”

Delving into the history of the show sheds light on the frustration many listeners felt when it launched on 7 October 1946. While the modern programme has explored taboo issues from the onset of menopause to female masturbation, the first Woman’s Hour was, in fact, presented by a man.

​While listener Bridget Long, writing to The Daily Worker in 1946, complained: “The programme is much too patronising. What women want is a programme to compensate us for being tied to our domestic chores, to help us keep in touch with the world outside, whether it’s books, films, politics or other countries.”

​Aired at 2pm to coincide with the moment that busy housewives could briefly put their feet up before the children came home from school, BBC bosses hired Alan Ivimey, an ex-RAF-officer-turned-journalist who “specialised in writing for and talking to women” to present the radio show. A woman, they decided, risked being “resented” by her listeners.  

radio stations have changed over time and increases in audience as they expand within the topics they speak about making it more relate able as well as radio being accessible from the internet and smart devices which means people can access the radio from anywhere . this is positive because it creates a sense of belonging and togetherness.