Every few weeks a free classified ads booklet drops through our door and invariably its back cover contains this half-page introducing “Petersfield and Godalming’s Spirit FM”.

Given that:

• these two towns have very little social connection. Godalming looks to Guildford, Petersfield to Portsmouth.
• you can barely pick up Spirit FM in the Hampshire town of Petersfield (I’ve just tried).
• Ofcom shows Spirit FM’s coverage to stop around 10 miles short of Godalming in Surrey.
• and Spirit FM positions itself as “100% West Sussex”

…this ad appears to be, at best, rather a waste and, at worst, counterproductive. So one has to wonder why the station is repeatedly publishing it. If you happen to know, do let on.

As far as I can tell, Spirit FM is a great local radio station but certainly not for people in Petersfield or Godalming.

Just to be sure, I ran a search for “Godalming” on Spirit FM’s website. Guess what? “Your search did not match any documents”.

Comments

• Sunday 3 January, 2010, Martin Phillp writes: This has been a tactic used by small scale commercial radio stations for a while now. We used to have a local station which called itself South London Radio which was licenced to cover the Lewisham area, but claimed to cover Croydon, Bromley "and the surrounding areas". The latter areas had next to no reception. Local advertising was poor and the station folded in January 2009.
• Sunday 3 January, 2010, Stephen Martin writes: you've kind of made my point for me Martin... pretending you're something you're not is seldom good for business.
• Monday 4 January, 2010, Marcus Durham writes: You'd need a pretty selective receiver and well positioned directional aerial to pick up up Spirit in either Godalming or Petersfield. Smacks of desperation, they'd do better to concentrate on their actual TSA.