JOY 94.9’s radiothon has seen the Melbourne LGBTI radio station “rise to new heights and spread more great news.”

The radiothon ended on a record-high result taking in over $300,000 in listener support donations from listeners.

“I am totally over the moon with this result,” says Program Director Chris Tait about the best result in the station’s history.

“The whole team pulled together, shared their personal stories and brought home the fact that we need an independent and strong queer voice in today’s media landscape. And
our listeners agreed.”

There was more celebration at the station with the latest Community Broadcasting Association of Australia (CBAA) McNair National Listener Survey recording JOY’s highest listenership yet, taking its audience from 345,000 at the beginning of the year to 377,000 in July.

The team at JOY were happy to see that the station’s female listenership is up and that there has been an increase in listeners for its evening programming, which is where
most of JOY’s specialised LGBTI content lives.

Combined with the fact that JOYs podcast downloads have doubled since the beginning of the year (to 77,000 a month), online listenership is at an all-time high, which suggests that JOY is not just on the up and up, but is spreading its reach wider.

Tait says: “There is a demand for LGBTI content, and JOY wants to be the national voice for the LGBTI community. We will always be Melbourne-based, but our community is widespread. We want to offer the same support to people in regional and rural Australia that we do to people in central Melbourne.”

JOY 94.9 is a Melbourne based community radio station, committed to providing a voice for the diverse lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans and intersex communities, enabling freedom of expression, the breaking down of isolation and the celebration of LGBTI culture, achievements and pride.