I was honoured to be associated with Soul People since it's birth in the summer of 2009 (and also the Sunday Soul Selection before that) until the summer of 2012, hosting/co-hosting 17 shows and engineering a further 6 shows for others in that time
As has been said, the sponsorship is always going to be a problem because Solar need to raise huge amounts each month to stay on the Sky platform, so I'm guessing it needs big revenues from each show, either in sponsorship, or on a pay-to-play basis
IMHO the more diverse or cutting edge the show, the harder it is going to be for mainstream advertising and i'm guessing this is what did for Soul People in the end, as it did lean towards real upfront/obscure/rare stuff (that's not a criticism, just my observation)? The folks' who were funding the show must have got to the point where they felt it wasn't justifying the spend? Saying that, the excellent Sunday Soul Selection (the show that ran for about three years prior to Soul People) played quality connoiseurs Soul Music each week and was sponsored by a Soul dealer and had tunes from their shop played each week and that went under too, so who knows what works?
On the listening figures, these would be interesting BUT would need to be coupled with downloads, podcasts etc. I know Zane did it religously each week on EMS (top man!) and some of the guests (me included) put links on their/our own websites/facebook/twitter/itunes/forums etc, so it's do-able as long as these figures could be pulled together? That way, maybe a future advertiser could stay on top of things and get an idea of what they are spending their money on?
Anyway, after about 6 years i'm still missing not sticking the radio on at 10am every Sunday (or downloading it if i was in a coma somewhere) and would love for Soul People to re-surface somewhere soon!
Cheers
Steve