A NEW radio service is being launched today by a multi-award winning team of visually impaired broadcasters in the UK.
‘Insight Extra’ will provide listeners with uninterrupted access to audio books, popular magazines, and a selection of some of the most interesting radio programmes focusing on sight loss from around the world.
Insight Radio, set up in 2006 by the charity RNIB as Europe’s first radio station for blind and partially sighted people, broadcasts from its headquarters in Partick, with satellite studios in Edinburgh, London and Cardiff.
Seven years on, Insight Radio’s audience figures now reveal 119,000 blind and partially sighted people are listening across the UK every week. Its success proves that the audience want more, says radio services manager, Ross Macfadyen.
“Insight Extra will be like our ‘red-button’ service and will carry full-length interviews and features about sight loss as well as more long-form material; books, magazines, conference coverage, etc,” he said.
“Through our research, and by listening to anecdotal evidence, we know there is an appetite for this kind of additional service, which will exist as an add-on to what we do on FM and across the digital platforms. We expect RNIB’s ‘Insight Extra’ to attract a new audience, which can only be a good marketing tool for the main station.”
Commenting on the launch, RNIB chair Kevin Carey said: “One of the problems that all blind people face, no matter how much help they get from their nearest and dearest, is getting enough information.
“Insight Extra will provide us with a rich mix of the kind of information no ordinary radio station can provide, which means that blind people will have a route to understanding their own condition
better and their own context better which will give them more self assurance.”
Steven Scott, one of the visually impaired producers at the station who has led the development of the service, said: “As a person living with sight loss, I welcomed RNIB’s Insight Radio as a way to learn more about others who have eye conditions similar to mine. Now, with ‘Insight Extra’, I can get even more in-depth information about issues that affect me, and even more access to talking books.”
RNIB’s ‘Insight Extra’ is available online at www.insightradio.co.uk/extra and is on air 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
Founding Editor of The Edinburgh Reporter.
Edinburgh-born multimedia journalist and iPhoneographer.
