It’s that time of year again when up and down the land, radio stations learn how many listeners they have, and therefore how well they’re doing. I always like to think of them as the equivalent of getting your exam results.
There’ll be lots of coverage of RAJAR in the usual places: Media Guardian and Radio Today. There’ll be a little bit in some of the trade press – but probably not a great deal (Broadcast magazine, for example, barely prints any radio news of any description, yet they’ll keep you up to date about what programmes Sky Real Lives has commissioned).
So what are the big stories this time around?
I suspect that 6 Music is going to get another bit of publicity. When Q1 data was released, the station was still on the chopping block, and it had seen a surge in listenership as its possible demise led to people discovering it. The initial threat came a good half way through the last measurement period, and since RAJAR figures tend to be quoted on a weekly basis, the average for the quarter included a lot of the station’s regular listening prior to the threat of closure. In other words, it was almost inconceivable 6 Music’s figures wouldn’t increase again.
This is borne out by the reach of the station increasing by a further 17% this quarter to nearly 1.2m listeners a week. Even more remarkable is the station’s 31% increase in listening hours. It now has 10.270m hours a week. To put that in perspective, Radio 3, a national FM service has 10.477m hours a week. That’s a remarkably large number for a digital only service. It also means that it has become a very important service in driving digital listening, accounting for 4% of all digital radio listening.
Whether these numbers can be sustained is a separate question, and I’d hazzard a guess they might drop a little next time. But time will tell.
Incidentally, that doesn’t mean that I want anything untoward to happen to Radio 3, a cultural icon of this country.
For the second quarter in a row, more people are listening to the radio than ever before. I think I’d better say that again because it’s not a boast that many media can make: more people are listening to the radio every week than ever before.
46.8m adults are listening to the radio each week, and overall listening time has also increased compared to both the previous quarter and the previous year. That’s despite there being more alternatives for someone to listen to something other than radio than ever before. I mentioned previously that Tim Davies had revealed on the Radio Academy podcast that the latest BBC Eartime research reported that 82% of all listening of any sort was to radio (i.e. including listening to our own music, or other online services).
6 Music aside, this has actually been a good quarter for commercial radio. Nearly all the major groups have seen decent increases in listening. Global’s listening hours have increased by 3.5%, while Bauer’s have increased by 3.5%. I should report that overall listening to the Absolute Radio network of services has increased by 4.5% (and to the main service by 6.5%), and that’s before our most recent launch – Absolute Radio 90s – has even been measured.
Overall this means that the BBC’s share of the all radio pie has fallen a little from 57% to 55% and commercial radio has grown a bit from 41% to 43%. I should point out that commercial radio tends to serve some audiences much better than others. So in London, commercial radio has a 52% share of listening to the BBC’s 45%. And amongst 15-44 year olds, commercial radio’s share is 53% to the BBC’s 44% because, let’s face it, there are few commercial services for older listeners.
Getting into some individual stations, Chris Evans might be a little disappointed that his listening has fallen back a bit. It’s probably not a surprise, as his first quarter figures were incredibly impressive. But then lots of people trialled the show, and it received an enormous publicity push at the start of the year. He’s now fallen 8% to around 8.8m people a week. And Radio 2’s overall listenership has fallen by about 6%. However, it remains easily the most listened to station in the country though.
Elsewhere nationally, Radio 1 has had a quiet quarter, Radio 3 has seen some falls, but Radio 4 and Five Live have both seen increases. Talksport also registered some growth, and like Five Live, probably benefited from the World Cup, much of which was in this period that ended on June 27. Classic FM has also seen some growth.
In London, there’ll be the usual fighting and crowing about who’s number one in London. The reality – rarely heard – is that Radio 4 is the biggest station in London. But you can’t buy ads on that, so the biggest commercial station does matter. Last time around Magic held the crown in terms of the overall number of listeners, and Capital was the most listened to station. But it’s all change this time around.
Heart has had a great quarter in London with a 16% increase in reach, and a 10% increase in hours. That powers it to the number one place in terms of reach. But Magic has also done exceptionally well and has increased its listening hours by 12% placing it as the most listened to commercial station in London.
Indeed Bauer has done very well in London all around, since Kiss is now the second largest commercial station in terms of hours, followed by Heart, LBC 97.3 and then Capital.
The reason that Capital does relatively poorly compared to the other stations in hours (although it maintains a decent reach), can be seen in the average number of hours listened to by each listener. Although this measure is a very “dirty” number, not taking into account heavy listeners and light listeners, it does reveal that the average Capital listener spends 5.6 hrs a week with the station, while the average Magic listener spends 6.8 hrs a week with the station. Heart, incidentally, is at an even lower average hours than Capital, at just 5.0 hrs a week, which is very odd. Assuming the station can hang on to the listeners it has, it really should be able to increase the number of hours spent listening to a number closer to 6.0 than 5.0, and in doing so, significantly increase its overall hours.
Stations that really superserve their listeners are Radio 2 with 11.9 hrs a week per listener, and LBC 97.3 with 11.4 hrs a week per listener. Absolute Radio’s listeners are actually very loyal spending 7.4 hours per week with the station, and 6 Music is achieving 8.6 hrs a week.
Other stories to notice are Planet Rock, which achieved its highest ever listenership with 718,000 per week, although its listening hours fell back a bit this quarter. NME Radio achieved its best audience to date with a 12% increase in reach and a staggering 134% increase in hours. Sadly, during the survey period, it was struggling and has come off the national DAB multiplex as it was temporarily closed down. Since then, Town & Country has stepped in to restart the station and bring back presenters. Whether it’ll return to national DAB is unclear, although these numbers do suggest a demand for the service. And the BBC Asian Network, which remains under threat of closure, seems to have rallied its listening with a 22% increase in reach, a 35% increase in hours.
At breakfast in London, Chris Moyles is holding Johnny and Lisa at bay by the narrowest of margins. But the biggest increase has come from Kiss, where Rickie and Melvin have seen their audience grow 38% on the previous quarter. (Again, I’ve not included the phenomenally popular Radio 4 in the mix here).
One key measure that’s always of interest is digital listening, and it continues to increase, rising to 24.6% from 24.0% last quarter. In other words, nearly one in every four hours of listening to the radio is done via a digital device. That 24.6% is made up of 15.8% DAB, 4.1% digital TV, 2.9% internet, 1.8% unattributed – listeners who were unable to say what device they were using.
Commercial radio’s digital listening stands at 24.4%, exactly the same figure as the BBC. (I should note that while commercial has seen a slight increase in listening share, the BBC has seen a slight fall in listening share from 24.6%. It seems likely that this is just a data blip, or an outlier data point. But I’m sure certain people will pounce on the number as some kind of failure, which would be very unfair). For commercial radio, that represents 1.5% increase on the last quarter.
Individual stations’ digital listening is subject to those services publishing their own numbers, or granting others the right to publish them. However Absolute Radio is always happy to publish its numbers. Overall Absolute Radio is now achieving 32.5% of its listening via a digital platform. For its national service (so excluding people in London listening on FM), this rises to 54.4%. And for the entire network of services including the digital only Absolute Classic Rock and Absolute 80s, it’s at 45.7%. While I can’t quote other services’ numbers, I can say that these are well ahead of most – but not all.
No doubt there’ll be much more to come, and I’ve concentrated on the national and London areas, utterly ignoring some undoubtedly interesting regional pictures.
I will finally note, however, that Ofcom today allowed Smooth in both the northwest, and London, to finally remove “jazz” (and other specifically named music types) from its format requirement. This is the station that has at least twice in its life, been called Jazz FM. Latterly jazz was only played out overnight. Smooth is morphing into a fully national station in October, and this approval was expected. Jazz does continue in a digital form, with the Jazz FM brand living on. For the record, Jazz FM’s reach dipped very slightly by 1.7%, but its hours increased by 5.3% compared with last quarter.
[UPDATE] Hadn’t noticed that Five Live’s reach is at an all time high for that station. And I should mention that Talksport is only just below its all time high reach.
Note: The source for all this data is RAJAR/Ipsos MORI/RSMB.
And as ever, these are my opinions and not necessarily those of my employer. That said, I wouldn’t have access to these figures without being an Absolute Radio employee. And much of what I’ve written here is based upon work carried out for Absolute Radio. Why don’t you visit Onegoldensquare.com and read our RAJAR release?