Radio Tinnitus is a digital radio station that helped Tinnitus sufferers through audio therapy. Tinnitus sufferers could listen to our radio station, find a match to their particular tinnitus sound and then use that sound to help their brain to switch focus from the noise in their head to the noise on the radio. Once they had done this they could turn down/off the internal noise.

• Situation - Chime is the national charity for deafness and hearing loss.

• Brief : Give hope to Tinnitus sufferers during Tinnitus awareness week.

• Objectives - Help some of the many people who suffer with Tinnitus.

James : “This ringing in my ears kinda culminates in a subway screeching…but a consistent screeching. Oh yeah that sounds a lot like it.

VO : Tinnitus is a condition that affects over 50 million people worldwide.

There is no known cure.

So in 2019, The Times in association with Chime, the society for deafness and hearing loss, set out to help Tinnitus suffers around the world.

Using the latest thinking in audio therapy we discovered that if we could match the noise that’s screeching inside a Tinnitus sufferer’s head and then play that same sound back into the sufferer’s ear - the listeners’ brain would switch focus from the internal noise to the external noise and by doing so they would gradually learn to switch the sound inside their head.

Since tinnitus sounds can differ greatly from some person to person - we spent months identifying and recreating the multitude of different tinnitus examples.

James: The white noise is kind of always the base and then on top of it a constant drone…yeah but not that frequency….oh yeah that sounds a lot like it…what’s funny is when I take my headphones off I continue to hear.

Vo : Then, to bring all these sounds to the masses, we choose the perfect medium for the task – Radio…by launching our very own digital Radio Station ‘Radio Tinnitus’. Launched during Tinnitus awareness week - we played all forms of Tinnitus sounds and treatments so that sufferers could use them to teach their brain to finally switch off from the distressing noise inside their head.

Radio Tinnitus from The Times. A radio station that broadcasted the hope of silence to Tinnitus sufferers around the world.