There's an interesting discussion starting about the @StephenNolan show on Radio Ulster and its contribution to the political climate in NI. His critics claim that the show has become 'part of the problem' due to its use of extreme commentators. There's even a #boycottnolan 1/
hashtag. When asked by @robert_mcmillen about how often various guests appeared on Nolan's shows, BBC NI refused to answer. So I've done a little bit of digging into the last month's worth of shows... 2/
There were 22 broadcast over the past 28 days and the BBC has published guest lists for all bar one. There is possibly some guests missing as some of the shows seem quite light on guests but it's reasonable indicator. 3/
In terms of the 21 shows, Nolan had at least 84 unique guests across around 120 guest spots. Of these spots, 46 were occupied by politicians of various hues. I haven't attempted to classify the commentators. Anyway, let's move onto the figures... 4/
Nolan's most frequent guest was @JimAllister of the TUV, who featured in one-third of shows. He is one of the 'extreme' commentators cited by Nolan's critics. Of the other two 'extremists' cited, Nelson McCausland appeared three times while @JamieBrysonCPNI was on two shows. 5/ 
The next table classifies the politicians featured on Nolan's Show by their stance on the Good Friday Agreement and their Assembly grouping. NA stands for Non-Assembly. Over the 21 shows, it seems that nationalist politicians may have been underpresented. 6/
A breakdown of Nolan's guest politicians by political party. I've counted @daithimckay and Nelson McCausland as Sinn Fein and DUP as they are used by Nolan as surrogates for those two parties. It appears that their official spokespeople are unwilling to be guests on his show 7/
The right-most column of the political party table is what I term an NIA ratio - the number of slots per party as a proportion of their assembly seats, i.e. if a party had 1% of the seats and guest slots, their ratio would be one. Higher numbers denote overrepresentation 8/
Finally, the most contentious issue featured on Nolan over the 21 shows was the Irish language act. Here is a breakdown of the guests who were invited to speak on that topic. I was surprised to see Jim Allister featuring so highly on this list 9/
And that's that. I make no comments on Nolan's choice of guests - it's a matter for himself and his editorial team. I just felt that some figures might help inform the interesting discussion which seems to be emerging about broadcasting and responsibility 10/
Forgot the table...
