This quarter radio continues to break through barriers, with record reach and listening hours!
The latest RAJAR results are out and 92% of the UK population now tune in to radio every week, with over 1 billion listening hours of radio consumed each week! 47.6 million adults listen to radio each week, up from 47.3 million adults in Q1, and 750,000 listeners more than were listening a year ago!
Commercial radio has reported 4% growth in listening hours quarter on quarter, with just under half a billion hours of commercial radio consumed each week, by 34 million adults!
National stations: Despite a slight dip in this RAJAR Classic FM is still the single largest commercial station in the UK, with weekly reach of 5.7m and 38m listening hours each week. talkSPORT have had strong RAJAR with an audience of 3.2 million listeners each week, but their listening hours are down QonQ to 20 million hours . With their exclusive Rugby World Cup commentary fast approaching we expect to see further rises. Planet Rock, which recently won the Arqiva award for “Digital Station of the Year”, have also reported record reach with 857,000 listeners per week. Their audience is predominantly 25-54’s and skewed to a male audience. Absolute Radio’s 80’s, 90’s and 00’s stations have had a fantastic set of results as detailed above, and Absolute Radio itself has reported a rise in reach with 1.6 million listeners each week, and a significant rise in listening hours with just over 14 million per week! With total reach across the Absolute Radio Network creeping up towards the 3 million mark, all we need to find out now is who their new owners are going to be…
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London: In the ever competitive London marketplace, this quarter’s winner is Bauer’s Magic 105.4, with a 6.1% market share and the highest reach and listening hours amongst all its contemporaries. It is followed by Heart London (5.1%), Capital London (4.8%), LBC (ILR) (4.5%) and Kiss 100 (4.3%) is in fifth position. It’s always staggering to see how strong Global Radio’s speech programming on LBC is, as each week their audience is tuning in for an average of 10.6 hours – which is the highest hours per listener in London (by a significant margin!). |
So how are the groups doing? Well Global Radio now reports 20m listeners each week, delivering 172m hours (up from 167m hours last quarter). Heart’s audience accounts for 7.7m reach and 54m hours (and rising), Capital accounts for 6.9m reach and 45m hours (and rising), Classic for 5.7m reach and 38m hours and Gold 1.5m reach and 13m hours. Bauer reports 13.7m listeners each week and 115m hours (up from 112m hours last quarter). Bauer’s Place Portfolio accounts for 9m reach and 75m hours (up) and its Passion portfolio for 6.6m reach and 40m hours (up). GMG now have 5.5 million weekly listeners, listening for 47 million hours (up from 46.5m hours last quarter). Smooth Radio now accounts for 3.2m of those listeners, and they’re listening for 24m hours (up from 23m last quarter). Whilst Real Radio accounts for 2.5m listeners, consuming 21m hours of output each week. UTV’s audience is now 4.5m, consuming 34.2m hours of radio. talkSPORT accounts for 3.2m of those listeners, who consume 20m hours each week. Absolute Radio Network have had a really strong RAJAR and are reporting 2.9m listeners each week, whilst delivering 24m hours. This is a huge jump from 2.4m listeners and 17.6m hours last quarter! Orion Media have stayed steady with 1.4m listeners each week and 10m hours. Sunrise Radio Group is also steady with 0.6m listening each week and 5m hours. JazzFM is similar with 0.6m reach and 2.2m hours.
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New station to RAJAR this quarter is Wales’ first national commercial station, Real Radio Wales. In their first set of result they are reporting reach of 471,000 each week – which is already higher than BBC Radio Wales! That said their audience in North and Mid Wales is still quite low, but from watching their long term performance with other station launches we would expect this to continue to rise in coming quarters. |
Round the country with over 300 stations we have to choose a selection of highlights for you, and this quarter we thought we’d take a look at the stations with the highest percentage reach each week. Radio Borders (The Scottish Borders) and Channel 103 (Jersey) both reach a phenomenal 57% of their potential audience each week. So to be clear 57% of those that could tune in do! Moray Firth (Inverness) reaches 54%. Island FM (Guernsey) reaches 51%, Manx Radio (no prizes for guessing its coverage!) reaches 50% and West Sound (SW Scotland) reaches 49%. Stations delivering over 40% weekly reach also include CFM (Carlisle), Radio Pembrokeshire, Cool FM (Northern Ireland), Northsound One, Swansea Sound/The Wave and Spire FM. This is something commercial radio does much better than the BBC, as commercial’s local services are much stronger (local commercial reaches 53% of people each week, whereas local BBC reaches 19%).
Some of the biggest successes, looking at percentage growth in audience quarter on quarter, include Absolute Radio 80’s, 90’s and 00’s (up 37%, 39% and 21% respectively QonQ), NME Radio (up 24% QonQ, but still down when looking YoY) and in London Kismat, Sunrise and Premier Christian Radio have both reported significantly higher audiences QonQ and YonY (58%, 25% and 100% respectively). At the other end of the scale the “Gold format” stations feature heavily amongst stations reporting a decline in reach QonQ.
Digital Listening Listening to radio via a digital receiver has now reached 26.9% of all radio listening, that’s an increase of over 10% year on year! 22 million people now tune in to radio via a digitally enabled receiver (DAB, DTV, internet) each week, for 289 million hours each week! DAB radio takes the largest share of this listening accounting for 64% of all digital hours, with DTV taking 18% and internet hours accounting for 12%. Listening to radio via a mobile phone has increased 16% year on year with 14% of all adults saying that they’ve listened in this way, and a massive 31% of 15-24 year olds saying they have listened in this way.
Station’s who podcast their shows are also reporting some good success stories. In particular Absolute Radio’s Frank Skinner Show posted record figures of 5 million downloads in the first six months of the year, and a million downloads in June alone, which for a station with 1.6 million listeners at the latest count is a phenomenal number! No wonder they re-signed him until May 2012!
RAJAR Q3 2011 In the next wave of RAJAR, which is due out on 26th October, the results will include responses via RAJAR’s new online radio listening diary. The online survey mirrors the paper diary, allowing all data to be integrated for reporting. RAJAR have been testing the diaries over the last few quarters, and have seen very consistent results with the paper diary. This shouldn’t come as a huge surprise as the questions are the same, but it has been an important test for RAJAR to ensure that the online data is as robust and reliable as the paper diaries. We believe around 16% of results in the next RAJAR wave will have come from the online diary.
That’s it from me for now. If you have any questions on RAJAR or if you would like any further information please feel free to contact your RadioWorks representative or alternatively email Simon@RadioWorks.co.uk
All the latest RAJAR Analysis can be found at http://www.radioworks.co.uk/rajar-analysis
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