Happy birthday to us!
YorkMix is 12 years old, and YorkMix Radio has just turned three – the perfect excuse to hold a birthday party!
Guests came to our bash at Impossible York in St Helen’s Square from across the city and beyond.
The evening was hosted by the Breakfast Club – Laura, Leigh and DG.
Laura Castle and Leigh Nicholson held a round of the breakfast show game Mug For The Money – with Visit York MD Sarah Loftus winning the top prize of County Stand tickets to the York Racecourse Music Showcase with Kaiser Chiefs.
Mrs YorkMix Radio had made some on-brand cupcakes, beautifully decorated in orange icing featuring the Mix logo.
And DG – aka YorkMix MD David Green – told the gathering that York was bucking the media trend.
Where other towns had seen their newspapers fold and their local commercial radio station subsumed into national networks, “we still have a daily newspaper in The Press, you know that there are three radio services operating from the city and just recently we’ve seen the launch of a podcast for the city too”.
He said York was a special place: “When you look to put down roots and you find York, you stay here.
“You find yourself telling everyone about what a great place York is, about that quirky little independent restaurant you found at the weekend or the brilliant event that you just happened to stumble across when you went shopping.
“And all of that is what drives us to produce York’s number one multimedia news and entertainment platform.”
The double birthday was a reason to celebrate, David said.
“And we do want to celebrate because YorkMix has some big numbers behind it – two million page views every month, and I assure you they’re not all from us clicking refresh!
“Ninety thousands Facebook, Twitter and Instagram followers, translating into hundreds of thousands of interactions each month, 105,000 audio streams each month… giving us a total of four million streaming connections made to YorkMix Radio since it launched three years ago.
“So you see, how could I not be proud to stand here and represent this amazing team of dedicated, hard working people who have committed to producing media content that connects.”
He said YorkMix is “101% committed to this community”, adding that “one of our top performing posts of this week was saying thank you to our audience for having donated trolley after trolley load of warm clothing that we’ve been able to donate to homeless people, women’s refuges and to those people who just can’t pay their heating bills at this time of year”.
David concluded: “We have plans to do much more. Last year we launched a coffee club loyalty scheme, which now has over 7,000 app based members.
“We have plans to grow this and our vouchers platform, giving the same opportunities to retail-based businesses and provide businesses in the city new collective ways to embrace our audience, with YorkMix carrying the cost of their wider promotion.
“We’re working with a number of organisations on new events, that bring in money and visitors to the city and we’re always ready to bring your news stories to a wider audience, even when it means kicking up a little bit of a fuss to get some action and right a wrong.”