Kiss Insight
THE KISS OF 2011 02 February 2011
Having waved January goodbye we are now in the full swing of 2011. The year so far has been a tad glum. Politicians continue to grace the face of newspapers with the gloom of a financially difficult year, and with flooding and rioting across the world, our awareness that all is far from rosy has been heightened. With this in mind we wanted to find out how Kiss listeners look at their year ahead and find out some of the hopes that accompany the inevitable fears for 2011.
First off let’s look at politics. A hot topic with so many changes afoot and an even hotter topic for our student populated audience. 26% of Kiss listeners have changed their political views recently with severe lack of trust towards the government being highlighted as the main reason. In addition to this lack of trust, the policy at the heart of listeners’ concerns is the loss of the EMA and the increase of university fees. Our listeners thought the government would be hard hitting on knife crime and public safety but those who voted conservative feel that the policies that matter have been disregarded and the ones that punish them have been swiftly applied.
Here’s a word cloud we’ve put together of all the responses and rants we had when we asked our listeners exactly why their political views have changed.
The disdain felt for the government is further highlighted when we look at the industries and people that Kiss listeners respect. At the very bottom of the pile, unsurprisingly, is Nick Griffin. Next up, and perhaps again unsurprisingly, it’s Nick Clegg who boasts just 13% of the audience’s respect and scores the lowest of the three main party leaders. David Cameron manages to outdo them all (and even the leader of the Green Party) with a 20% respect rating, a figure that’s doubled since late 2009 when we asked listeners the same question. It would seem that despite there victimisation of the student population, people still feel that of the three leaders, Cameron is the strongest candidate.
However, aside from Cameron’s minor victory, what’s most telling about current attitude to politics is that of all the different services/people we asked listeners to rate, all political related people and departments were consecutively low scoring. Even the Banks did not manage to break this trend, scoring higher than any of them. Such is the distrust for the government that people trust profit driven banks over the very body and people that are meant to be making things better.
The Fire Service and the NHS were top of the polls, both gaining the respect of over 80% of the Kiss audience. And these were also the industries that listeners wanted to see protected from the inevitable financial cuts this year. In addition to this, it would seem listeners have little sympathy for those in the public sector with less than half wanting to protect them from the funding chop.
Just 13% of Kiss listeners are worry free when it comes to their own impending finances and again, the biggest issue plaguing people’s minds is the loss of the EMA and university fees.
But it’s not all doom and gloom, phew. 38% of Kiss listeners are in agreement that the Royal wedding will have a positive effect on the economy this year and with 60% of listeners having made New Year’s resolutions, there’s a lot of people who have started the year with great optimism. Of those positive 60% the main aspiration, with 54% agreeing, is to exercise more. Saving money is a close second at 48% and in third place is eating healthier which also gets 48% of listener’s votes. Now these may seem fairly common when it comes to a resolution, but what is important about these top three is the positivity with which they’re phrased. These resolutions beat 'the diet', 'spending less', 'drinking less' and 'smoking less'. It seems Kiss listeners are not thinking about what their losing this year but how they can enrich their bodies and their pockets.
Here's another little word cloud to show just how positive are listeners are.
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