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Overall Trends

It’s a big day for radio today. Earlier on Wednesday evening, the Radio Academy ARIAS were handed out in London. These are the big radio industry awards.

(Ironically, they were handed out in Leicester Square. I say ironically, because Global is based there, yet continue to choose not to enter the awards which I find just very sad).

And also today is the first RAJAR release of 2025 is also out, and it shows that just over 50m people listen to All Radio each week. That’s down 0.4% on the quarter (but up 0.3% on the year). Hours fell 0.6% on the quarter (up 0.4% on the year) to 1.027 billion hours a week. That means that the average radio listener spends 20.5 hours a week with the medium.

All BBC Radio saw its reach fall 0.9% on the quarter, but rise 0.3% on the year to 31.4m. Hours were down 3.1% on the quarter and down 0.3% on the year to 442m.

Meanwhile All Commercial Radio saw reach fall 0.2% on the quarter and rise 0.5% on the year to 39.9m. Hours were up 1.2% on the quarter and were up 1.7% on the year to 563m.

As a consequence, the BBC has a 43.1% market share while Commercial Radio has a 54.9% share (the remainder being non RAJAR-measured listening). Interestingly, listeners to both BBC Radio and Commercial Radio each spend an average of 14.1 hours a week with their respective services.

A reminder that year-on-year comparisons are still seeing the impact of the demographic changes from the most recent census introduced in Q2 2024. See previous RAJAR analyses for more details on this, and in the meantime treat year on year comparisons with some caution.

National Stations

In general terms, the BBC music services have done less-well this quarter than the speech services. But not always. And speech services across the board have done pretty well.

BBC Radio 1 saw some falls this quarter after a good Q4. Reach was down 1.9% on the quarter, but up 1.1% on the year to 7.4m. Hours fell 2.9% on the quarter, but were up 7.2% on the year to 49.4m.

Over at BBC Radio 2 there were also some quarterly declines. Reach fell 4.0% on the quarter, and was down 0.9% on the year to 13.1m. Hours fell 6.3% on the quarter and were down 1.2% on the year to 139m.

BBC Radio 3 won Station of the Year at the ARIAS and also had a strong quarter with reach growing 10.0% on the quarter and up 7.7% on the year to 2.1m. That’s the best reach in nearly 4 years. Hours were up 7.3% on the quarter and down 1.5% on the year to 15.8m. Radio 3 recently got an approval from Ofcom to launch Radio 3 Unwind as a DAB+ service, and it’s expected to launch in the coming months (it’s on BBC Sounds currently).

BBC Radio 4 also had a strong quarter with reach up 3.2% on the quarter and up 1.4% on the year to 9.3m. Hours were flat on the quarter and down 1.6% on the year to 111m.

Similarly BBC Radio Five Live saw its reach climb 0.7% on the quarter and rise 10.0% on the year to 5.4m. Hours were up 5.3% on the quarter and up 9.7% on the year to 32.2m.

BBC 6 Music saw its reach fall 7.2% on the quarter, but rise 1.1% on the year to 2.6m. Hours were down 6.3% on the quarter and were down 4.9% on the year to 24.1m.

The BBC World Service also saw a reach increase, up 2.2% on the quarter, but down 1.2% on the year to 1.2m. Hours were down 0.7% on the quarter and down 29.4% on the year to 5.0m (The Q1 2024 hours were quite anomalous for the station).

That speech success came during a quarter when there was a lot of news coming, not least a new president in the US who generated a mountain of news on his own. So it’s interesting to see if that uptick was reflected in other speech stations.

LBC (UK) saw reach fall 1.7% on the quarter, but was up 3.8% on the year to 2.6m. Hours were down 5.4% on the quarter, but up 3.1% on the year to 28.3m. So LBC didn’t seem to benefit in the same way.

Across the overall LBC Brand (UK) which includes LBC News, reach was down a modest 0.2% on the quarter and up 2.5% on the year to 3.3m. Hours were down 3.1% on the quarter, but up 2.8% on the year to 31.1m.

On the other hand, it was a good quarter for Times Radio which saw its reach grow 3.0% on the quarter and 23.7% on the year to 622,000. Hours were up 13.0% on the quarter and also 13.0% on the year to 5.0m. Those are record reach and hours figures for the station, which has seen a slow and steady rise over time.

Across at stablemate Talk, there were declines, with reach down 3.8% on the quarter and significantly down 35.9% on the year to 485,000. Hours were down 16.1% on the quarter and down 13.7% on the year to 4.3m.

On the other hand GB News Radio saw its reach rise 19.4% on the quarter and grow 22.9% on the year to 559,000. Hours were up 24.5% on the quarter and up 35.0% on the year to 4.3m. Those are the station’s biggest hours since its DAB launch in Q1 2022.

talkSPORT had some great results with reach up 7.8% on the quarter and up 3.4% on the year to 3.5m. Hours were up 13.2% on the quarter and up 7.8% on the year to 22.7m. That’s their biggest reach ever! And their biggest hours since Q4 2010.

Classic FM saw its reach rise 1.4% on the quarter and 2.2% on the year to 4.5m, while hours rose 0.6% on the quarter, but fell 6.1% on the year to 35.0m. Notably, Classic Calm saw a 22% increase in reach to 290,000, with hours up 35% to 1.8m.

Boom Radio had some more good results. Reach did slip 1.3% on the quarter, but was up 15.8% on the year to 697,000. Hours were up a massive 27.3% on the quarter and up 34.5% on the year to 9.6m. This was a record high number of hours, and Boom Radio listeners now listen for an average of 13.7 hours a week which is incredibly loyal. By way of comparison, Radio 2 listeners listen for 10.6 hours a week, and Radio 4 listeners listen for 11.9 hours a week.

Commercial Networks

Bauer has recently announced that like Global, it will be ending all local programming on many of its Hits Radio services (notably excluding Scotland), but this hasn’t yet happened and isn’t captured in this data.

Across Bauer Media UK Total (exc Partners) reach fell 0.3% on the quarter and was down 3.7% on the year to 21.8m. Hours were down 0.7% on the quarter and down 7.2% on the year to 197m.

Greatest Hits Radio had been on something of a roll, but this quarter it saw its reach fall 3.0% on the quarter and 7.1% on the year to 7.1m. Hours were up 0.2% on the quarter, but down 2.6% on the year to 62.5m.

Across at Hits Radio, reach was flat on the quarter (0.0%), but up 3.3% on the year to 4.7m. Hours fell 0.2% on the quarter and were down 19.6% on the year to 23.3m.

The Absolute Radio Network saw its reach fall 0.7% on the quarter, but rise 1.6% on the year to 5.6m. Hours fell 7.7% on the quarter and were down 2.0% on the year to 34.7m.

Absolute Radio saw its reach fall 8.6% on the quarter and fall 17.0% on the year to 2.0m. Hours fell 7.8% on the quarter and were down 7.3% on the year to 13.0m. Meanwhile, Absolute 80s saw its reach fall 3.5% on the quarter and fall 4.3% on the year to 1.5m. Hours were down 6.5% on the quarter and dropped 17.2% on the year to 7.0m.

The Kiss Network saw some recovery from last quarter at least. Reach was up 2.6% on the quarter, but down 5.9% on the year to 3.9m. Hours were up 1.7% on the quarter and down 14.6% on the year to 16.0m.

KISS bounced back a bit from its precipitous fall last quarter. Reach was up 37.5% on the quarter, but still down 36.5% on the yeart o 1.5m. Hours were up 12.5% on the quarter, but down 41.6% on the year to 4.9m. KISSTORY also saw falls, with reach down 5.7%on the quarter and down 13.8% on the year to 2.0m. Hours fell 9.8% on the quarter and were down 32.3% on the year to 7.1m.

The Magic Network saw its reach grow 3.2% on the quarter, but fall 18.1% on the year to 3.6m. Hours were down 3.8% on the quarter and down 23.6% on the year to 17.9m.

Magic saw a 10% rise on the quarter, but was down 26.9% on the year for a reach of 2.5m. Hours were down 1.9% on the quarter and down 41% on the year to 11.5m.

Total Global Radio (UK) saw its reach fall 0.8% on the quarter but rise 5.2% on the year to 27.6m. Hours were flat on the quarter (0.0%) and up 3.3% on the year to 253m.

Heart is the real performer at Global. The Heart Brand (UK) saw its reach grow 0.7% on the quarter and 8.0% on the year to 13.4m. Hours were up 3.2% on the quarter and up 4.3% on the year to 84.3m. Those are new record figures for the group.

The Heart Network (UK) had a very strong quarter with reach up 1.3% on the quarter and up 7.9% on the year to 10.2m. That’s a record high reach for the network. Hours were up 3.9% on the quarter and up 0.8% on the year to 60.7m.

The Capital Brand (UK) saw a 2.5% fall on the quarter for reach, but 13.7% growth on the year, reaching 9.4m. Hours fell 5.0% on the quarter but grew 15.1% on the year to 48.9m.

The Capital Network (UK) saw its reach fall 4.1% on the quarter but rise 14.3% on the year to 7.1m. Hours were down 6.2% on the quarter, but up 19.8% on the year to 35.2m.

Smooth Brand (UK) saw its reach fall 0.4% on the quarter but grow 19.6% on the year to 7.8m. Hours were up 0.7% on the quarter and up 17.0% on the year to 49.5m.

Finally, a good quarter for Radio X Brand (UK) with reach up 2.8% on the quarter and up 12.6% on the year to 2.5m. Hours rose 6.0% on the quarter and were up 1.7% on the year to 19.1m.

Platforms & Podcasts

The number of people who listen to podcasts was 22.4% (down 0.1% on last quarter), with 12.9m saying they listen each week. (Again, be cautious when comparing this with other podcast stats, as the methodology is different here).

There is definitely still some more analysis required about how podcast listening is impacting speech radio, particularly amongst certain demographics. And that’s something I’ll try to get back to in the future.

Elsewhere

If you want to learn more about RAJAR, I was one of the guests on this week’s Radio Academy Podcast. The episode discusses how RAJAR is measured and what the different metrics mean.

Matt Deegan‘s blog is here.
The official RAJAR site has all the topline figures
Radio Today for a digest of all the main news
Media.Info for lots of numbers and charts
The Media Leader will have analysis
BBC Mediacentre for BBC Radio stats and findings
Bauer Media’s corporate site
Global Radio’s corporate site
Radiocentre’s website

All my previous RAJAR analyses are here.

Source: RAJAR/Ipsos MORI/RSMB, period ending 30 March 2025, Adults 15+.

Disclaimer: These are my views alone and do not represent those of anyone else, including my employer. Any errors (I hope there aren’t any!) are mine alone. Drop me a note if you want clarifications on anything. Access to the RAJAR data is via RALF from DP Software as mentioned at the top of this post.