RAJAR

RAJAR Q3 2018

RAJAR
As ever, this post is brought to you in association with RALF from DP Software and Services. I’ve used RALF for the past 9 years, and it’s my favourite RAJAR analysis tool. So I am delighted that I continue to be able to bring you this RAJAR analysis in association with RALF. For more details on the product, contact Deryck Pritchard via this link or phone 07545 425677.

Radio 2

It has been something of a tumultuous period for radio in the last few months, and especially for Radio 2‘s line-up. First there was Chris Evans announcing he was upping and leaving Radio 2 to head to Virgin Radio, to be replaced by Zoe Ball in Wogan House. Then at the start of this week Simon Mayo announced he’d leaving his Radio 2 drivetime show where he had recently been paired with his “radio wife” Jo Whiley. He leaves the station altogether – although thankfully his Five Live show with Mark Kermode remains – while Whiley gets a new evening show, pushing Radio 2’s specialist music slightly later into the evening. Come January, the station is going to look and sound somewhat different to how it does today. No news yet on where Mayo might also go. The release on Monday mentioned a new two-book deal following the publication of his first adult novel, although he’s been writing young adult books for a number of years. I don’t think one precludes the other. Mayo also recently launched a book-focused podcast away from the BBC – I suspect that his Radio 2 book club, and the book review slot he had before that on Five Live, are both missed by publishers.

Digging a little into programmes is worthwhile. Chris Evans saw his show fall 2.4% on the quarter to 8.8m, but it’s down 5.7% on the year. Those are Evans’ lowest ratings in a while, although his announcement didn’t come in time to unduly affect them. In any case, I’d be amazed if we don’t see a bump in the next RAJAR release for his final shows.

There was a lot of interest in the Jo Whiley and Simon Mayo last time around, since if you believe the reviews, the show is not good – the chemistry between the pair reportedly wasn’t there (I don’t listen, so can’t really say). In spite of that, reach for the show increased last time around, not fitting the narrative. This time around it’s a different story. Reach is down 6.6% on the quarter and down 6.9% on the year – leaving the show with 6.0m listeners. Hours are also down, falling 6.7% on the quarter and 5.7% on the year. A little low for the slot?

Where does all this leave the station in the latest RAJAR – with all the current shows still in place? Well it’s down a little. Reach falls 2.0% to 14.6m on the quarter, although it’s down 4.7% on the year. Hours are broadly in line, down 3.1% on the quarter to 176m, while they’re down 4.2% on the year.

Before we go too much further, it’s worth reminding ourselves that this data is for summer 2018, from the 25th June until 16th September (at least for big national stations). Overall radio listening wasn’t too weather affected. Reach was down 0.4% on the quarter and down 0.9% on the year, but hours were up 1.0% on the quarter, but down 1.9% on the year. I remain most worried by that last number. Hours are still over 1 billion, and average hours are up slightly to 21.1 hours a week. The average age of a UK radio listener is 48.

That means that the Radio 2 has under-performed slightly compared with the radio as a whole. But it’s comfortably the UK’s largest station.

National and Brands

Over on Radio 1, Greg James moved into breakfast over halfway through this RAJAR period, so it’s not easy to say how he’s doing so far. However, Radio 1 itself, had a decent bump during the period. Reach was up 3.9% on the quarter to 9.6m listeners (although down 1.0% on the year), while hours were up 2.6% on the quarter (but down 0.5% on the year). Those are good numbers for Radio 1.

Elsewhere across the BBC, Radio 4 saw reach grow very slightly on the quarter, up 0.4%, but it’s down 5.1% on the year. Hours are down 0.6% on the quarter and 3.7% on the year. Brexit boredom? The data doesn’t say. (Today is down 0.4% on the quarter and down 3.9% on the year, while hours are up 2.3% on the quarter and down 3.9% on the year. But nor does the data indicate which presenters people like.) Will Eddie Mair’s departure for LBC, with Evan Davies replacing him make much difference to PM? Again it’s too early yet to say with Davis having only just started on the show.

Radio 3 got its Proms bump with reach up 1.4% to 1.9m (down 1.5% on the year). Hours were well up this quarter – up 10.3% on the quarter and up 13.7% on the year. I hate to disappoint Radio 3 listeners, but the jump looks a little too good to me, so expect some “correction” next quarter.

Five Live had quite a decent quarter. Most of the World Cup was over by the time data started being collected. Nonetheless, reach was up 6.3% on the quarter (down 0.7% on the year), while hours were up 11.7% on the quarter (down 0.3% on the year).

6 Music can’t claim to have broken any records this quarter! But with 2.5m listeners, it has its second highest ever reach, up 3.0% on the quarter and up 3.6% on the year. Hours were down 9.1% on the quarter, but up 5.3% on the year. Recall that Lauren Laverne is lined up to take over breakfast in January, but there’s still another final quarter of Shaun Keaveny before then.

Over at LBC, they have been busy trumpeting the arrival of Eddie Mair. They’re certainly spending in broadsheet newspapers promoting his new show which runs 4-6pm and goes head to head with his old slot in the second hour. Interestingly, away from radio, owners Global has bought no fewer than three different outdoor companies. Aside from going from zero to the joint largest outdoor company in the UK in only a couple of months, it does also mean that there might be a lot of inventory for cross promotion of other Global assets like its radio stations. Can we expect to see lots of LBC, Capital and Heart digital outdoors adverts? I wouldn’t be surprised.

Mair’s show didn’t start until September, so is not really measured in these figures (notice a theme?). Overall LBC was broadly flat – down 0.5% on the quarter in reach, but up 0.3% on the year with 2.1m listeners. Hours show a 1.4% increase on the quarter, but have fallen 9.6% on the year. They hover just over 20m a week.

Classic FM was broadly flat this quarter, up 0.6% in reach on the quarter but down 4.6% on the year. Meanwhile hours are up 0.4% on the quarter, but down 3.3% on the year.

Virgin Radio is obviously an interesting station to keep an eye on. We’ve not heard any more stories about presenters who might be joining Evans at the station. I think it’s safe to infer that Charlie Sloth (he of ARIAS stage invading infamy) isn’t heading there.

While we wait to see what plans owners News UK have in store for the station, reach has fallen 2.1% this quarter to 414,000. That’s a 25.5% decrease on the year. Hours meanwhile are down 9.4% on the quarter and down 13.9% on the year. However I think we can expect a massive marketing push once Evans arrives. As Private Eye has noted, newspapers like The Sun are already onside.

TalkSport has been busy buying up cricket rights to overseas England tours recently. Right now the station is the official rights holder for the tour of Sri Lanka, and they have more tours upcoming. Interestingly, the BBC’s TMS team has adopted something more akin to what TalkSport used to do when it didn’t have rights – doing unofficial quasi-commentaries “off-tube” (aka with TVs on silent). So we’ve had the Cricket Social which seems to actually be going down quite well.

But back to TalkSport. They had a decent quarter in reach terms, up 2.2% to 3.0m on the quarter (up 1.1% on the year). Hours aren’t quite as good, down 4.4% on the quarter and down 4.2% on the year, just dipping below 20m. Sister station TalkSport 2 bounces around much more because its listening is still very low. Reach was up 2.2% on the quarter but down 18.4% on the year, while hours are up 55.5% on the quarter and up 29.1% on the year.

TalkRadio is very similarly sized, but reach was up 10.1% on this quarter to 261,000 (up 2.0% on the year). Hours are up 24.3% on the quarter but down 7.6% on the year.

Absolute Radio had a mixed set of results, with it’s reach down 4.6% on the quarter (but only down 1.4% on the year). However hours were up 9.6% on the quarter, but down 6.2% on the year. Across the entire Absolute Radio Network, reach was up 2.4% on the quarter and 7.8% on the year to 4.9m – the highest number ever achieved by the brand.

Good news at Absolute 80s where it achieved a record of 1.8m – up 14.7% on the quarter and 15.0% on the year Hours were down 3.5% on the quarter, and up 6.3% on the year. And Absolute Radio 90s also achieved record figures with 913,000 listeners – up 11.1% on the quarter and up 20.8% on the year, with hours even more impressively up 12.4% on the quarter and 31.3% on the year. A reminder that 90s are fast becoming the new 80s.

Kiss fell back a little this quarter, down 3.2% on the quarter and down 2.0% on the year, while hours were down 2.5% on the quarter and down 18.2% on the year. But the whole Kiss Network achieved its best ever figures with a combined 5.8m listeners.

Magic was down a little in reach, down 2.2% on the quarter and down 2.8% on the year. But hours are nicely up, increasing 11.4% on the quarter and up 11.1% on the year. But across the entire Magic Network, it was another record for Bauer with 4.1m listeners.

It’s also worth mentioning Jazz FM which has recently been bought by Bauer. They’ve not quite been moved into Golden Square just yet, but they’ll be bringing 657,000 listeners with them (down 2.2% on the quarter, but up 15.3% on the year), with 2.7m hours (down 10.6% on the quarter but up 18.9% on the year).

Overall Bauer did well this quarter, with a combined 18.165m listeners – up 2.6% on last quarter and up 2.1% on last year. They have 159m hours, up 4.4% on the quarter and up 3.2% on the year.

Over in Leicester Square, Global Radio doesn’t show an enormous amount of change this quarter. They’re essentially flat in reach and hours with 23.668m reach and 207m hours. (Note they sell slightly more than this, since some of the brands they sell aren’t actually owned by them).

The Capital Network shows no real changes on the quarter, but there are some falls on the year. Reach is essentially flat, up 0.2% on the quarter, but it’s down 4.2% on the year. Meanwhile hours are also up 0.2% on the quarter, but they’re down 16.3% on the year. The broader Capital Brand (i.e. including Capital Xtra) is similarly flat to slightly up on the quarter but down on the year.

The Heart Network didn’t perform fantastically this quarter, down 2.1% in reach on the quarter and down 1.9% on the year. More concerningly, hours were down 6.4% on the quarter and down 4.7% on the year. The picture improves across the entire Heart Brand which includes Heart 80s.

Heart 80s had some good results this quarter, up 15.9% on quarter and up 25.0% on the year. Hours were down 9.6% on the quarter while still being up 12.1% on the year.

Radio X saw another decent set of numbers with reach and hours both continuing to climb. At the moment, it’s probably the most improving brand Global has (although Smooth’s doing fine too). Reach was up 2.3% on the quarter and 12.7% on the year, with a reach of 1.7m, while hours were up 8.8% on the quarter and up 36.5% on the year.

Meanwhile the Smooth Brand reached 5.8m with reach up 3.5% on the quarter and up 2.5% on the year, while hours grew 6.2% on the quarter and were up 0.8% on the year.

Finally a word about Jack FM, which has just announced a national version of the station, Jack Radio, that will be 100% female in output. Recall that their existing national station Union Jack, is 100% British artists. While they’re doing some interesting things, you can’t help but wonder about the branding. More than once I’ve had to explain that Union Jack isn’t some kind of Brexit-favouring right leaning station. And I’m not sure that “Jack” shouts female listeners to me. In their Oxford home TSA, Jack continues to beat Heart which is a strong result. Nationally, reach was down a little to 111,000 for Union Jack, while hours grew to 508,000.

Digital

Digital listening continues to grow, reaching 52.4% of all listening this quarter. 34.4m people listen on a digital platform each week – 71% of the population.

Internet listening has reached a record level this quarter, with 11.1m listeners. That’s up 3.9% on last quarter and up 11.7% on last year. Average time spent listening is also growing – up from 8.4 hours a week to 8.9 hours a week. I suspect, but cannot prove, that this is a combination of the growth of smart speakers (Amazon Alexa, Google Home) and cheaper and bigger data bundles on mobile.

15-24s

There were actually slightly more 15-24s listening to the radio this quarter than last! 6.5m, up 1.0% on the quarter (although down 1.6% on the year). Listening hours for this group remain a concern, down 1.7% on the quarter and down 5.8% on the year.

Further Reading

For more RAJAR analysis, I’d recommend the following sites:

The official RAJAR site and their infographic
Radio Today for a digest of all the main news
Go to Media.Info for lots of numbers and charts
Mediatel’s Newsline will have lots of figures and analysis
Paul Easton for more lots analysis including London charts
Matt Deegan will have some great analysis
The BBC Mediacentre for BBC Radio stats and findings
Bauer Media’s corporate site
Global Radio’s corporate site

All my previous RAJAR analyses are here.

Source: RAJAR/Ipsos MORI/RSMB, period ending 16 September 2018, 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.

Eddie Mair on LBC

So now we know. Eddie Mair will be taking over drivetime from Iain Dale on LBC, broadcasting 4-6pm Monday to Friday. He settles into his new desk next Monday, while previous incumbent, Iain Dale, shuffles into the evening 7-10pm slot.

Interestingly, this also means that Mair has the “pleasure” of handing over to Nigel Farage at 6pm which is where Farage’s show lands in the new schedule. I feel certain that there won’t be any droll back-handedness to any of those links. (LBC’s late night presenter Nick Abbot was perhaps the master of these. Years ago, at Virgin Radio, when he had the afternoon slot, his handovers were something to behold.)

I think like many others, I had been perhaps anticipating that Mair might move into breakfast, since Nick Ferrari has been doing breakfast shows for an awfully long time now. But Ferrari’s obviously not ready to stop yet, although this safely lines up Mair for such a time as Ferrari is ready to stop. Drive presenters are regularly first in line for the breakfast throne.

A lot will be made of the fact that Mair is up against his old programme, however it doesn’t necessarily follow that thousands of Radio 4 listeners will follow him over the parapets. 

The chart above shows the overall station overlap between Radio 4 and LBC. It shows that around half a million people listen to both stations in any given week. But, perhaps more relevantly, it means that while 24% of LBC’s audience listen to Radio 4, only 5% of Radio 4’s audience listen to LBC, at least in the course of a week.

There will be a myriad of reasons for that disparity, not least that the stations offer very different things. But in part this can also be explained by the loyalty of listeners to both stations.

That loyalty can be measured in a couple of ways. First of all, there are average hours per listener. According to the latest RAJAR and based on 6 month weighting:

  • Radio 4 listeners spend an average of 11.2 hours per week with the station
  • LBC listeners spend an average of 9.6 hours per week with the station

Both of these are high figures. In other words, listeners to those stations love them and spend many hours with them. Every hour they spend with their preferred station, is an hour they’re not spending with another station.

And then there are station repertoires – the number of different stations a listener hears over the course of a week. The lower the number, the more loyal the listener.

  • Radio 4 – 3.4
  • LBC – 4.1

Radio 4 listeners are slightly more loyal than LBC listeners.

If your station has a high listeners per hour figure and a low repertoire figure, you’re in heaven. Your listeners are going nowhere else, and they’re listening to hours of your station a week!

Finally, to examine the overlap between the stations, you can also do something called a Switching Analysis. RAJAR measures when listeners switch from one station to another, or indeed where they turn on and turn off their radios. 

Looking at the data, there’s nothing very conclusive about Radio 4 and LBC listeners. The biggest gain by Radio 4 from LBC comes at 1pm Monday-Friday, when 4,000 LBC listeners switch over to The World at One, and 3,000 come over from LBC for The Archers instead of staying for, er, Nigel Farage.

On the other hand LBC gains 8,000 listeners from Radio 4 at 9.00am when Start the Week, In Our Time etc begin, tuning for the final hour of Nick Ferrari. A further 4,000 head off to James O’Brien instead of staying on for Woman’s Hour.

But these are all trifling numbers in the scheme of things, when you consider the overall respective stations’ sizes.

And Eddie Mair’s new programme on LBC, and PM on Radio 4 are likely to be very different beasts. The LBC show is twice the duration, although it will have to accommodate 10-12 minutes an hour of advertising. LBC doesn’t anything like the resource the BBC’s news operation has, so it’s unlikely that we’ll be hearing very carefully constructed packages from teams of producers and reporters. On the other hand, Mair will have more time for his interviews, and to engage with listeners.

None of this is to say that there aren’t some enormous fans of Mair, so his personality alone is likely to see some giving him at least a trial. LBC would love to gain a few more Radio 4 listeners, even if only for a couple of hours a day. It will be interesting to see how much marketing Global gives LBC to promote their new signing.

And while that awkward 6pm junction when he’ll have to hand over to Nigel Farage is not perhaps a natural one for Mair, the rest of LBC’s daytime output of James O’Brien in the mornings and Shelagh Fogarty in the afternoons, probably makes Mair a natural fit for the early evenings.

In any event, Mair’s show comes at the start of RAJAR Q4, so don’t expect any reports on the relative audience changes until the end of January next year.

Note #1: I do hope Global does something interesting with Mair and a podcast. Although they publish a number, I’m not sure that they’ve fully adapted to podcasting, still earning a few quid selling complete shows behind a paywall. It’s notable that Mair is going to continue to present the BBC’s Grenfell Inquiry podcast until the end of November.

Note #2: Global’s press site is incredibly hard to navigate. It looks like some junior web designer was allowed to run away with themselves building without any thought as to visitors. It’s user unfriendly. I’m pretty sure it’s not accessible. And criminally, it’s not responsive. Seriously – try looking at it on your phone!

Read more on the challenges faced by LBC on this move over at Earshot, where Steve Martin has written more about the issues.

RAJAR Q2 2018

RAJAR
As ever, this post is brought to you in association with RALF from DP Software and Services. I’ve used RALF for the past 9 years, and it’s my favourite RAJAR analysis tool. So I am delighted that I continue to be able to bring you this RAJAR analysis in association with RALF. For more details on the product, contact Deryck Pritchard via this link or phone 07545 425677.

We’re into the depths of summer, and many people are on holiday. But there’s still a new set of RAJAR results to look at.

Earlier this week a new Advertising Association/WARC report said that radio was the fastest growing medium, with growth of 12.5%. Commercially, radio is in a good place, but how about audiences?

Radio Listening

Overall radio listening has fallen a small amount this quarter, down 0.7% on the quarter in reach, and down 0.8% on the year. Reach is down to 89% from 90% for the last few quarters.

Of bigger concern (see all previous RAJAR pieces I’ve written), is the drop in hours. They’re down 0.9% on the quarter and down 1.7% on the year to 1.015bn hours a week (the lowest since the start of 2016). Average hours per radio listener remains constant at 20.8 hours a week, although that remains a record low.

The BBC’s reach has fallen slightly to 34.47m (down 1.5% on the quarter and down 1.4% on the year), with Commercial Radio also falling a little to 35.51m listeners (down 1.3% on the quarter and down 1.0% on the year). Commercial Radio reach remains higher than the BBC’s reach as it has done for the past few quarters.

In terms of listening hours, the BBC remains bigger with 51.7% of radio listening compared with Commercial Radio’s 45.7%. For the BBC, listening hours have fallen – down 1.2% on the quarter and 2.7% on the year. Commercial Radio has grown a little however, up 0.9% in hours on quarter, although down a fractional 0.1% on the year. A reminder that the missing bit in the middle to get to 100% includes stations not measured directly by RAJAR including some internet radio stations, smaller local stations and community stations.

Digital listening was the big thing last time around, with the 50% mark broken reaching 50.9%. This quarter it has slipped back a little to 50.2%, but the numbers can bounce around a little so I’m not too concerned about that. It’s always the longer term trends that really show what’s happening, and they’re upwards.

National and Digital

This hasn’t been a great quarter for Radio 1, which has fallen 2.4% in reach on the quarter, and is down 3.7% on the year. It now reaches 9.236m listeners a week (15+), the second lowest its reach has ever been.

Listening hours are a slightly different story however, with hours up 4.6% on the quarter, although down 7.3% on the year.

The big programming news is the forthcoming switch between Nick Grimshaw at Breakfast and Greg James on Drive. They don’t start their new shifts until September, but I thought it was worth having a look at their final full quarters

In his last full quarter on Breakfast at Radio 1, Nick Grimshaw is up 3.8% in reach to 5.3m, although down 3.8% on this time last year.

Meanwhile Drive was down slightly (measured on 4pm – 7pm inclusive), reaching 4.05m this quarter – down 4.3% on last quarter and down 3.2% on last year.

It’ll take a while for the new shows to settle, and indeed it won’t be until the Q4 results are in that we’ll even be able to see how the new presenters are doing.

Over on Radio 2, reach has fallen a bit this quarter, down 3.1% to 14.93m listeners (But up 0.3% on the year). Hours are more positive, up 0.6% on the quarter and up 4.3% on the year to 181.48m a week.

The big news on Radio 2 is the new Drive show, with Simon Mayo now joined by Jo Whiley. As is the way of these things, there were a few negative stories surrounding the change – even though this was obviously a way for Radio 2 to get at least one woman into the peak daytime schedule. I would just point out that the more popular a show is, the more reaction there is from listeners when there are changes. And that it of course takes time for a new show to bed down.

The new show only began midway through the RAJAR quarter, with roughly half the figures reflecting Mayo’s solo show.

The other key thing is that Mayo’s previous show was for two hours – 5.00pm – 7.00pm daily. The new show runs three hours – 5.00pm to 8.00pm daily, except Fridays when it is two hours. I’ve used the new hours of the show for a point of comparison, even though that would have included specialist music shows in the 7pm hour previously.

Reach for the show is up on last quarter, with 6.31m listeners compared with an equivalent timeslot of 6.23m last quarter. That’s up 1.3% in reach on the quarter, but down 0.6% on the year.

Radio 3 is down 1.3% in reach on the quarter, and down 7.5% on the year. In terms of hours it’s down 3.3% on the quarter, and down 9.1% on the year.

Radio 4 has seen some falls this quarter, down 2.9% in reach on the quarter (and down 8.3% on the year), while hours are down 3.2% on the quarter (and 6.2%) on the year. That’s the lowest reach since Q2 2015, although in overall terms the Radio 4 audience is relatively consistent over the longer period.

The Today programme has seen a certain amount of attention shone on it in some circles recently. There was a long piece in The Observer a few weeks ago by Miranda Sawyer which took clear aim at the programme. And in these politically charged times, different presenters cause different reactions to different parts of the audience.

To be clear, I don’t believe in using your own social media network to determine the relative success or failure of a particular programme. But looking at listening figures can be useful.

Considering the Monday-Friday edition of the programme, running 6am-9am, the reach is down 3.6% to 6.82m a week. Year on year, this is down 11.0%. On the other hand, this time last year was the Today programme’s biggest ever audience. As recently as Q1 2016, the Today audience was lower than it is today. It might be useful to include a chart here to show, that in fact, Today is a pretty consistent performer.

I’d also point out that only Chris Evans has a higher audience in either radio or television at that time of day.

This quarter included the end of a not especially competitive Premier League season and about ten days of what would prove to be a very lively World Cup. However neither were enough to stop Five Live’s reach falling 8.0% to 4.73m (and down 11.0% on the year). Hours were down 1.7% on the quarter and down 10.6% on the year.

By way of comparison, Talksport was also down, falling 7.2% in reach on the quarter, and down 3.2% on the year. However it was up last year, climbing 10.4% on the quarter and up 31.8% on the year. It should be said that last year’s Q2 Talksport figures were pretty poor, and quite likely “rogue” as I said at the time.

The main question each quarter with 6 Music is whether it has broken any records this time around?

Well, it has.

Reach has dipped a little, down 3.4% on the quarter to 2.44m. But it’s still up 9.4% on the year. But hours are a new record, up 0.5% on the quarter to 24.28m (and up 25.3% on the year).

BBC World Service English is up 5.7% on the quarter, but down 5.0% on the year to a consistent 1.51m reach. Hours are down a little however – down 2.8% on the quarter and down 22.6% on the year (although last year’s hours were exceptionally high).

Classic FM’s reach is a little disappointing – down 7.6% on the quarter and down 10.9% on the year to 5.15m. That’s the lowest reach since Q1 2016, and the second lowest reach the station’s had in all time.

Hours are also down for the station – down 7.6% on the quarter and down 12.2% on the year – to 35.34m

I’ve already mentioned Talksport, but stablemate Talksport 2 is still struggling, with reach down 13.1% on the quarter and down 18.8% on the year, to 273,000. Hours were down 40.0% on the quarter and down 31.4% on the year to 681,000.

LBC has been riding high for the last few quarters, but this quarter has seen a small dip. Reach was down 2.8% on the quarter to 2.1m, but that’s still up 3.0% on the year.

Hours were down 0.7% on the quarter and down 6.1% on the year.

The big question with LBC is where they’re planning to put their major new signing Eddie Mair, who is leaving the BBC and the PM programme on Radio 4, that he has made his own. You imagine that he’s going to get quite a big slot somewhere on the station. Nick Ferrari has been in the breakfast slot on LBC since the start of 2004 – a run over more than 14 years now. With 1.13m listeners, he’s a solid performer, up very slightly on both the quarter and the year. But how much longer does he want to go on in that slot? You certainly feel that LBC is likely to reshuffle the deck a little.

In Christian O’Connell’s final RAJAR quarter, Absolute Radio saw an increase in reach of 5.0% to 2.54m. Year on year, the increase was a very healthy 20.9%. Hours were down 6.0% on the quarter, but up 1.8% on the year.

O’Connell’s final show was at the midway point of the RAJAR quarter, but his final set of numbers showed a 6.1% increase in reach to 2.15m. That’s also up 16.6% on the year. Note that O’Connell’s show was carried across the entire Absolute Radio Network, and those figures are calculated on 6 month basis. Of course Dave Berry also has a claim on some of those figures, and Bauer can position his show as the biggest breakfast show on commercial radio.

The Absolute Radio Network itself is growing very nicely with a reach of 4.74m, up 4.2% on the quarter and 10.3% on the year. Hours are also growing, up 6.0% on the quarter and up 4.0% on the year to 34.44m. Those are both record highs for the network!

After the main service, Absolute 80s is the next biggest constituent part of the network, and it was fractionally down this quarter in reach. With 1.54m listeners it was down 1.5% on the quarter, but up 1.6% on the year. However hours are up both on the quarter (up 11.0%) and the year (up 8.8%) to 8.06m.

(Close competitor Heart 80s did less well this quarter, with reach falling 16.3% on the quarter to 1.17m, but up 37.4% on the year. Hours were better, up 4.7% on the quarter and 55.3% on the year. A reminder that Heart 80s has better distribution than Absolute 80s in terms of DAB, because its multiplex has better coverage.)

It’s also worth having a look at Absolute Radio 90s, because – well – the nineties are becoming the new eighties. If you were 15 in 1995, you’d be 38 today and hitting that moment when you get nostalgic about the music of your adolescence.

Absolute Radio 90s has just had its record reach and hours audiences. Its reach of 822,000 is up 20.2% on the quarter and up 26.3% on the year. Hours are up a massive 42.0% on the quarter and 34.4% on the year. This follows the station rejoining the D1 national multiplex back at the start of the year, having spent three years on local muxes. This rejig by Bauer would seem to be paying dividends, and I suspect that this is a station to watch.

Bauer has had a good quarter with all its national brands.

Kiss is up 3.3% in reach on the quarter (and down 0.6% on the year) to 4.58m reach. Hours are up 2.1% on the quarter and up 2.5% on the year to 20.89m.

The Kiss Network is up 1.9% in reach on the quarter (up 4.4% on the year), and down 0.4% in hours on the quarter (up 4.8% on the year). Kisstory continues to do well, up 9.5% on the quarter (and up 21.1% on the year) to 1.94m reach. Hours are up 12.9% on the quarter and up 14.0% on the year. On the other hand Kiss Fresh sees declines across the board.

Meanwhile Magic is up 10.9% on the quarter and up 11.6% on the year to 3.29m in reach. Its hours are also strong, up 8.4% on the quarter and up 18.9% on the year. The overall Magic Network is up in reach and hours – up 3.0% in reach on the quarter (up 6.8% on the year), and up 2.7% in hours on the quarter (up 3.5% on the year). All three sub-brands are also up on the quarter.

Bauer has also rebranded Key 103 in Manchester to Hits Radio, at the same time creating the Hits Radio Brand which incorporates the Manchester FM station with all their other city FM stations (e.g. Clyde 1, Hallam FM, Radio City). However the rebrand only took place at the start of June, and those services as well as the Hits Radio Brand network are all 6 month reporting stations, so it’s not really worth examining closely just yet for any impact of the rebrand on RAJAR.

Overall Bauer Radio is up 1.2% in reach on the quarter and 2.6% in reach on the year – with 17.71m reach in total. In terms of hours, it’s up 0.6% on the quarter and 3.4% on the year – with 151.9m hours in total.

Over at Global, the overall reach for Total Global Radio (UK) is up very slightly to 23.69m – up 0.1% on the quarter, and up 1.5% on the year. Hours are down slightly to 207.5m – down 0.4% on the quarter and down 2.3% on the year. Global obviously remains the biggest commercial radio group with just over 50m more hours than Bauer. And it continues to grow through buying other stations. Only this week it bought 2BR in Lancashire. Earlier this year it has also bought Juice 107.2 in Brighton (Update: Which is to rebrand as Capital in September). At the end of last year it also bought two other stations in Lancashire – The Bay and Lakeland Radio.

As for Global’s main brands, Capital Brand UK (which includes Capital Xtra) is up 1.3% in reach on the quarter, and down 3.2% on the year to a total of 8.34m. Global is keenly waiting for the day that overtakes Radio 1’s figures. Hours are down 2.9% on the quarter and 12.5% on the year to 42.34m. So as with Radio 1, this is a challenging audience to maintain listening with, as more listeners spend more time with streaming services.

The slightly older Heart Brand UK fares slightly better, up 2.7% in reach on the quarter, and up 5.9% on the year to 9.76m. Hours are also up to 68.26m – up 2.6% on the quarter and up 1.8% on the year.

Smooth Brand UK also performed well this quarter, up 2.3% on the quarter and up 1.1% on the year in reach, while hours are up 4.7% on the quarter, and down 5.2% on the year.

Radio X is perhaps Global’s strongest performing brand in percentage, turning in another set of decent numbers across the network. Reach is up to 1.68m (up 6.3% on the quarter and up 20.7% on the year), while hours are up to 13.21m (up 8.7% on the quarter and 32.5% on the year). The station has had a set of solid upwards numbers over the last 12 months, and this would seem to be set to continue.

London

I’ll leave others to get into the detail for London, but I’ll highlight the biggest stations.

In terms of reach it’s Radio 4 with 2.46m although it’s down 10.1% this quarter (and down 14.3% this year). That leaves Radio 2 a close run second biggest station with 2.42m listeners (up 12.9% on the quarter and up 9.3% on the year).

Third placed is Kiss with 2.09m reach (up 7.1% on the quarter and up 1.9% on the year). It can claim the biggest commercial radio crown. It’s just ahead of Capital in fourth place with 2.06m reach (down 3.5% on the quarter and down 10.8% on the year).

The other stations with over 1m audiences in London are Radio 1 (1.49m – down 3.9% on the quarter, down 1.6% on the year), Magic (1.67m – up 21.6% on the quarter, up 7.8% on the year), Heart (1.40m – down 6.0% on the quarter, down 17.4% on the year), LBC (1.28m – up 2.0% on the quarter, down 9.3% on the year), Classic FM (1.12m – down 19.1% on the quarter, down 24.7% on the year), and Radio 5 Live (1.08m – down 3.9% on the quarter, down 6.5% on the year).

In terms of hours, it’s Radio 2 (27.4m hours – up 23.4% on the quarter, up 14.3% on the year), Radio 4 (25.9m hours – down 13.0% on the quarter, down 15.3% on the year), and LBC 97.3 (13.16m hours – up 17.9% on the quarter, down 16.1% on the year).

Overall radio listening in London is always something to keep an eye on, as trends in London often precede wider national trends. In fact reach in London is up very slightly this quarter to 10.74m. That’s up 1.0% on the quarter, although down 1.2% on the year. Reach in London is at 88%, just behind the national reach of 89%. In terms of hours, listening is down slightly to 204.9m hours. That’s down 0.8% on the quarter and down 1.2% on the year. That hours figure is going to be something worth keeping an eye on, as it is at its lowest since the start of 2016 – although its lowest ever figure was 198.0m at the start of 2015.

Further Reading

For more RAJAR analysis, I’d recommend the following sites:

The official RAJAR site and their infographic
Radio Today for a digest of all the main news
Go to Media.Info for lots of numbers and charts
Mediatel’s Newsline will have lots of figures and analysis
Paul Easton for more lots analysis including London charts
Matt Deegan will have some great analysis
The BBC Mediacentre for BBC Radio stats and findings
Bauer Media’s corporate site
Global Radio’s corporate site

All my previous RAJAR analyses are here.

Source: RAJAR/Ipsos MORI/RSMB, period ending 24 June 2018, 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.

RAJAR Q1 2018

RAJAR
As ever, this post is brought to you in association with RALF from DP Software and Services. I’ve used RALF for the past 9 years, and it’s my favourite RAJAR analysis tool. So I am delighted that I continue to be able to bring you this RAJAR analysis in association with RALF. For more details on the product, contact Deryck Pritchard via this link or phone 07545 425677.

50.9%.

UK radio is now more listened to via a digital platform than it is an analogue one. The rise has been steady over a number of years but as the chart below shows, we’ve finally seen the percentage of all radio listening breach 50% this quarter.

As I said previously, while this theoretically should kick-start the process for a digital switch-over, I don’t actually foresee anything major happening at this point.

What I’m not saying is that a great deal will happen very quickly once the 50% mark is breached. While theoretically allows processes to begin for an analogue to digital switchover for radio, I just don’t see that happening very soon. Generally speaking other things are using up lots of Parliamentary time at the moment. Similarly, I suspect that recently announced radio deregulation will take longer than many might hope, because there just isn’t time to fit in the primary legislation required to do anything.

Ofcom published a good primer on the subject last year:

In July 2010 the Government launched its Digital Radio Action Plan. As part of this, it was requested that Ofcom produce an annual review of the digital radio market.

The Action Plan was launched to ensure that if and when digital switchover occurs in radio, it can be delivered at a time when the market is ready and in a way that protects the needs of listeners.

The Government stated that a decision on whether to set a date for digital radio switchover would be considered when the following criteria are met:

  • when 50% of all radio listening is via digital platforms; and
  • when national DAB coverage is comparable to FM, and local DAB reaches 90% of the population and all major roads.

The Action Plan was finalised in November 2013, and on 16 December 2013 DCMS announced that while there had been steady growth in digital listening, it was not yet the time to commit to a switchover. The last version of the Digital Radio Action Plan was published in January 2014.

And of course the one outstanding key challenge is in-car listening. At this point 33.4% of in-car listening is digital. That’s good, and the vast majority of new cars come with DAB as standard. But there are lot of other cars on the road.

Elsewhere, it’s also worth noting that Q1 each year usually sees a bump in listenership because of devices sold over the Christmas period. This year, an awful lot of Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant devices were sold. But stalwart DAB radios always do well at this time of year too. Combined, they mean that post Christmas, people change the way they listen to the radio.

Radio Listening

Reach is up to 49.2m people a week, or 90% of the population. But average hours per listener have fallen below 21 for the first time, down to 20.8 hours a week. Inevitably that’s a consequence of other things eating into overall radio listenership.

I hate to keep labour the same point every quarter, but this is being driven to a significant extent by younger listeners. 15-24s now only listen for an average of 12.7 hours a week, which is a whole hour lower than the previous lowest figure. To put this in context, five years ago this group listened for 15.8 hours a week.

The one thing I would bring to bear from this, is that any formats or licences that target listeners by age groups – particular younger groups – are on a hiding to nothing. For example, Radio 1’s average age is 35 (down from 36 last quarter), and at this point, it’s essentially impossible to lower its average age.

National and Digital

It has been a decent quarter for Commercial Radio, with reach up 1.5% on last quarter and 4.2% on last year, just putting it ahead of BBC Radio in overall terms.

BBC Radio has more listening, despite seeing hours fall 3.2% on last quarter, and 1.5% down on last year.

The BBC national radio networks have all seen some disappointing numbers this quarter. Five Live is perhaps most disappointing with a fall in reach of 5.7% on the last quarter, to 5.1m (down 3.7% on last year). Listening hours are worse being 9.2% down on the quarter and 13.0% down on the year.

Such are the declines that I’d probably wait another quarter to be certain that they’ve not just had a bad RAJAR. While the Premier League hasn’t been the most exciting this year, there was plenty of football on during this period, and it was a generally busy time for both news and sport.

Perhaps all the listeners have gone to 6 Music, because they’ve had another superb set of results, with record reach and hours. Reach is up 8.0% on the quarter (up 8.0% on the year), to 2.5m. Hours are up a whopping 12.3% on the quarter (and up a more modest 3.2% on the year).

The interesting thing here is that 6 Music listeners might be considered to be the kind of people more likely to have Spotify or Apple Music (RAJAR doesn’t measure that), so the audience is rising at the same time as more of its audience has access to more music. Indeed, as with younger demos, 35-44s are seeing a gradual decline in time spent listening, which somehow 6 Music is overcoming. That said, the average age of a 6 Music listener is 43, and that has crept up from 38 over time.

There’s probably an interesting question to asked around the musical breadth of knowledge of a 6 Music listeners – or at least their desire to have one – and the need for guiding voices in the stations’ presenters. On the other hand, a station that plays a much tighter playlist might have less demanding listeners, and therefore find itself more susceptible to listeners switching to playlists on Spotify et al. That said, listeners to those stations are probably less likely to spend £9.99 a month on music.

But I’m hypothesising wildly here. Let’s get back to the numbers.

Radio 1 will be disappointed with its fall this quarter after a decent set of results last time. It’s down 3.8% in reach on last quarter, although it’s up 4.0% on last year. Hours are also down, falling 7.7% on last quarter, but just falling 0.5% on last year. More worrying is that the average listener spends just 6.0 hours a week with the station.

Radio 2 sees small falls too, with reach down a fractional 0.5% on the quarter while being up 2.6% on the year. Hours are down 5.1% on the quarter however, and down 2.5% on the year.

The station has just made some of the biggest changes to its weekday schedule that it’s done for years, but it’s going to be another couple of quarters before we can see the first results of that. And even then, the most notable change in peak, is a slight change in hours of Simon Mayo’s show and the introduction of Jo Whiley to the mix.

Radio 3 is down 0.9% in reach on the quarter, but up 2.6% on the year. Hours are somewhat better as it jumps 5.6% on the quarter and 2.7% on the year.

Radio 4 ducks just below 11m in reach with a fall of 3.0% on the quarter (down 1.8% on the year). Hours are up 0.9% on the quarter, but down 4.0% on the year. It’s not as though there’s a shortage of news, but one suspects there’s only so much Brexit/Trump that some listeners can take, hence the slight dip in reach after a strong run of results in recent quarters.

Radio 4 Extra has had a disappointing quarter with reach down 8.1% on the quarter, although up 3.1% on the year – which if nothing else shows that smaller stations can see their numbers bounce around. Perhaps more concerning is the 15.6% fall in hours on the quarter (and a 8.0% fall on the year).

The World Service remains fairly consistent with 1.4m listeners down 5.1% on the quarter, but up 7.4% on the year. Hours are up slightly with 3.4% growth on the quarter and 2.3% growth on the year.

Classic FM has had a solid set of results with reach down a little to 5.6m – down 1.7% on the quarter, but up 4.0% on the year. Hours are a little more mixed falling 4.1% on the quarter yet rising 10.2% on the year.

Talksport has had a some of its best numbers for a while, and has risen back above 3m again to 3.1m reach – an 8.9% rise on the quarter and a massive 14.3% rise on the year. Meanwhile hours are back over 20m and are up a massive 25.4% on the quarter and 13.5% on the year. The station continues to receive newspaper marketing support from its parent company News UK, and they again seem to be more active in the sports rights market. Although not in this RAJAR period, they have recently bought some England Test cricket rights for upcoming overseas tours to Sri Lanka and the West Indies, while they also had exclusive radio commentary of the recent Anthony Joshua fight.

Digital sibling, Talksport 2 has some positive numbers with reach up 1.0% on the quarter, although up 15.9% on the year. More importantly, hours are up 37.2% on the quarter and 49.9% on the year. Perhaps their EFL rights which largely sit on Talksport 2, are beginning to pay off?

Good news for Talksport 2 listeners and others on the SDL mulitplex, is that owner Arqiva on Tuesday announced that they will be extending the reach of the mulitplex by a further 4m with 19 new transmitters due to come on board.

That will also be useful for TalkRadio, which had some positive numbers as well, with reach up 30.6% on the quarter (32.8% on the year) and hours massively increasing, up 55.7% on the quarter (up 155.7% on the year). While these are good numbers, there’s no doubt that the format is expensive, and the station needs to see more growth to get it from 316,000 reach closer to somewhere around 1m.

Absolute Radio had some great results last quarter, but slipped back to 2.4m this quarter, down 7.3% in reach, although still up 11.4% on the year. In hours terms they were flat – really flat. 18,517,000 last quarter v 18,514,000 this quarter. And they were up 6.4% versus last year.

Christian O’Connell leaves Absolute Radio tomorrow, before he relocates to Australia to present the breakfast show on Gold FM in Melbourne. These therefore aren’t quite the final set of results for his tenure at the station.

The wider Absolute Radio Network has fallen a little, down 3.2% on the quarter, although still up 7.2% on the year in reach. Hours fell 4.4% on the quarter and were down 2.0% on the year.

Absolute 80s, however, did better this quarter, growing 5.8% on the quarter and up 14.8% on the year in reach. It also rose 13.5% in hours on the quarter, but fell 11.1% on the year.

Recall that Absolute 80s has a new competitor on the block in the form of Heart 80s, and the newcomer has better coverage being on D1 rather than SDL where Absolute 80s moved to (Again, the increase in coverage of the SDL mux should benefit Absolute 80s in due course).

Heart 80s also grew, rising 20% on the quarter (it’s too new for year on year figures), while hours dipped 5.5%.

For those keeping score, Absolute 80s is 161,000 listeners ahead of Heart 80s with 1.560m listeners. Although as an aside, it’s clear that the two stations, whilst both featuring music from the 80s, are actually quite different. Read this excellent and enlightening Twitter thread from Nik Goodman to get a better understanding of the differences.

Partly as a result of the success of Heart 80s, the Heart Brand (including all the local Heart stations, Heart 80s and Heart Extra) overall has had some good results. Reach is up 3.6% on the quarter and up 6.1% on the year, while hours are up 1.9% on the quarter, although down 1.9% on the year.

Sister network, Capital Brand, fared less well with reach down slightly – down 0.7% on the quarter and down 0.8% on the year. Hours fared slightly worse, perhaps reflecting wider listening behaviours in their target age group, with a fall of 7.1% on the quarter and a fall of 7.8% on the year.

The Kiss Network targets a similar age group, and saw falls on the quarter, although better results compared with this time last year. Reach was down 0.8% on the quarter but up 9.0% on the year, while hours fell 12.2% on the quarter but were up 3.2% on the year.

The Magic Network didn’t have a great quarter with reach down 3.4% on the quarter, although up 5.8% on the year. Hours are down 3.7% on the quarter and down 2.7% on the year. None of their digital sister stations, Magic Chilled, Magic Soul and Mellow Magic are doing enormously well, with only Magic Soul seeing an increase this quarter. Mellow Magic is the biggest of the three with a reach of 432,000 and 1.7m hours.

LBC is one of the better performers this time around, and whatever you think of it, their mix of politically charged presenters and the various politicians (and ex-politicians) that they get in for phone ins, seems to work well for them.

Reach is up 7.1% on the quarter and 21.5% on the year to 2.2m. That’s their biggest ever audience under the current methodology (You’d probably have to go back to the 70s or 80s to get a bigger audience for its FM in London, and at that time, there were only two commercial stations in the capital).

Hours aren’t quite a record, but they’re up 0.3% on the quarter and 5.7% on the year.

Jazz FM isn’t a station I mention too often, but I probably should. Their reach is up 16.1% this quarter (and up 22.4%) on the year, to 591,000. Hours slipped to 1.7m – down 18.7% on the quarter, although up 7.6% on the year. I mention this particularly to put their numbers in perspective with some of the other newer, but smaller digital stations.

London

The London radio market is always worth looking at – if only for signs of things to come. The average London listens to 19.4 hours of radio a week – so a bit less than the UK average. In part, that will be due to fewer people driving in London, but it might also be down to things like propensity to subscribe to other audio services.

19.4 hours isn’t the lowest we’ve seen – that was 19.1 hours a week back in Q2 2017. But it’s definitely part of a trend that last saw the average London listening to the radio for more than 20 hours being back in the middle of 2016.

I will also dutifully point out that the most listened to radio station in London is, as always, Radio 4 with 2.7m listeners. That’s followed by Radio 2 with 2.1m, itself very closely followed by Capital London, also with 2.1m (I’m rounding here for simplicity).

So Capital is the reach leader commercially (Radio 1 has a reach of 1.6m). The station is up in reach on the quarter (up 1.4%), but down on the year (down 4.6%). In hours terms, it’s not so good, with a 7.9% fall on the quarter to 9.0m hours and a 16.6% fall on the year.

Heart London is the commercial music leader in terms of hours with 10.1m, up 11.6% on the quarter and up 8.8% on the year. Reach is down 4.2% on the quarter but up 7.0% on the year.

Another figure to mull over when comparing the two Global stations is their respective average hours. For Heart it’s 6.7 hours a week, but for Capital it’s just 4.2 hours a week. That feels very low for a market leader. Just a year ago, it was 4.8 hours a week.

Kiss is a close competitor to both these two services, with 1.9m reach (down 3.7% on the quarter and up 8.3% on the year) and 9.6m hours (down 10.1% on the quarter and up 14.4% on the year). It has 4.9 hours per week average listening.

But the actual commercial hours leader in London is of course LBC which has grown in London as it has done nationally. Reach is up 3.3% on the quarter and 17.1% on the year to 1.3m, while hours are basically flat at 11.2m (down 0.1% on the quarter and down 3.0% on the year). It’s listeners spend 8.9 hours a week with it. And interestingly, their average age has just fallen to 49. LBC is perhaps younger than you think…

Magic has not had a great set of results this quarter in London, falling 12.3% in reach on the quarter and down 5.7% on the year. In hours, they’re down 11.6% on the quarter and down 4.6% on the year.

A couple of other Global services with good figures are Radio X and Smooth. Very different, but both showing positive moves.

Radio X has seen its best reach since its rebrand from Xfm, and indeed even if you include Xfm’s numbers, it’s best figures since 2013. It’s reach is up 4.3% on the quarter and remarkable 40.5% on the year, to 531,000.

In terms of hours, it’s an even better story, with hours up 14.3% on the quarter and up 81.9% on the year to 3.7m. That’s an average of 7.0 hours a listener per week, and the best hours the station has had since it was Xfm in 2004! Global has spent a lot over time marketing the service, and it may be coming to fruition.

Smooth said goodbye to Russ Williams on breakfast, but he left as the station put on 13.3% reach in London on the quarter (and up 6.6% on the year), while hours were up 6.8% on the quarter and up 0.3% on the year.

BBC London‘s numbers have been a little all over the place of late. Last quarter they had some incredibly good record breaking numbers, and things have, perhaps, “normalised” a little this quarter. Reach is down 20.9% on the quarter, but still up 38.0% on the year to 454,000. Meanwhile hours are down 50.5% on the quarter, but up 59.6% on the year to 2.1m. The station’s numbers are, frankly, bouncing ridiculously. 50% swings between quarters don’t happen, and it suggests that measuring the station’s audience is hard.

BBC London aside, it feels like RAJAR in London isn’t swinging around as wildly as it had in the past, which is much better for the currency.

MIDAS

RAJAR’s MIDAS survey isn’t actually part of the regular RAJAR release and was published last week. But I thought that there were a few things that were worth mentioning here.

11% of the UK population listen to a podcast in any given week – that’s 6.0m people (down very slightly from last time around, although the trend remains upwards).

Radio’s share of all audio is at 75% which is the same as last time around.

But if there’s a theme, it’s that the share of audio that is live radio for 15-24s has fallen below 50% for the first time. In the Winter 2017 survey it was at 50% for this demo, and 63% for 25-34s. However, in this new release, the share amongst 15-24s has fallen to 46%, while that among 25-34s is the same as before. On the other hand, on demand music services (e.g. Spotify) has grown from 28% to 34% for the younger demo.

This rate of change is fast, and it’s entirely conceivable that within a year, radio will have fallen below on demand music services for 15-24s.

At the moment this is a youth oriented issue. Among 35-54s, only 6% of audio is on demand music, and it drops to 1% for 55+. That offers some comfort to radio, but it will need to adapt to match the growth of these new services.

The full MIDAS release is here.

Further Reading

For more RAJAR analysis, I’d recommend the following sites:

The official RAJAR site and their infographic
Radio Today for a digest of all the main news
Go to Media.Info for lots of numbers and charts
Mediatel’s Newsline will have lots of figures and analysis
Paul Easton for more lots analysis including London charts
Matt Deegan will have some great analysis
The BBC Mediacentre for BBC Radio stats and findings
Bauer Media’s corporate site
Global Radio’s corporate site

All my previous RAJAR analyses are here.

Source: RAJAR/Ipsos MORI/RSMB, period ending 1 April 2018, 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.

Shutting Down AM

Today, Ofcom published a short consultation based on a request from Absolute Radio to shut down a number of AM transmitters and reduce the power on some others.

In essence the request, which I confidently expect to be quickly agreed to, has three main details:

  • They want to close down completely 12 AM sites, and reduce the power of another 5 transmitters, leaving 20 transmitters in total.
  • These closures and reductions in power will see national AM coverage fall from 90.5% of the population to 85.4% of the population.
  • This would save Bauer Radio, Absolute’s owners, just over 50% of their costs.

So for a relatively small reduction in coverage, Bauer saves a lot of money for a service that is largely also available in one or more of DAB, FM, digital television or the internet in all the affected locations. I think it’s only fair to note that there are FM alternatives wherever the BBC is shutting down an AM station. But the point is still valid, especially with regards to music stations.

Bauer points out that the BBC has been shutting down a number of AM transmitters across its local radio network, and that AM music listening in particular is in massive decline.

This all seems eminently sensible to me. Indeed there’s a fairly incendiary line in Ofcom’s consultation:

“Absolute Radio has made these proposals in the context of declining listening to AM radio and increasing transmission costs and noted that, if it is not able to make these changes, it may have to consider shutting down Absolute Radio’s entire AM network and surrendering its national licence.” [My emphasis]

In the interest of full disclosure, I should say that when I was previously employed by Absolute Radio, I too looked very closely at the AM transmitter issue, and we were also very close to shutting down the AM network and handing back the national licence.

While that might seem dramatic, in reality the business is driven by digital and FM. At the time FM was only in London, but Bauer switched its West Midlands licence to FM as well. And it had always been in the interests of first Virgin and later Absolute to transition its listeners to DAB as quickly as possible.

For me, the larger question is whether the entire AM network shouldn’t be shut down, allowing Bauer to make savings of those other 50% of AM costs?

Lots of stations are on lots of platforms, but there is a cost to every additional platform a station goes on, and most stations will try to break down those costs to come up with some kind of cost per listener-hour by platform.
For the average local station, for example, FM is relatively cheap. In many cases it’s a single transmitter somewhere on a hill, and the kit and running costs are relatively. For any transmitter you also have to factor in electricity costs, and these are also relatively low for FM.

AM transmitters require vastly more power, and the costs can be significant. DAB is relatively cost efficient, but it usually requires more sites than FM, with the advantage that digital transmission lets you “fill in” gaps without causing interference. You can’t do that with AM or FM, hence secondary analogue transmitters have to be on different frequencies.

It’s not always easy to figure out those costs per listener-hour since RAJAR doesn’t break things down to quite a low enough level. For example, if you broadcast on both AM and FM, RAJAR can’t really differentiate beyond making assumptions using geography. Similarly, there are several TV platforms (Freeview, Freesat, Sky, Virgin Media etc), but RAJAR just reports “Digital Television” in general. If your favourite station isn’t on your preferred TV platform, it might well be because the station can’t really work out whether it’s worth going onto that platform.

Returning to AM, and Absolute in particular, there are some interesting things in the consultation document. The sites that are proposed to be closed are largely in rural areas, those close to FM coverage, or those with high DAB penetration. Obviously Bauer has done a fair bit of analysis to come up with this list.

They estimate that 19,000 current listeners on AM will lose access to the AM signal following these changes. A small cost in listeners compared to monetary savings.

Ofcom notes that this represents 4% of the total AM audience of 472,000. But I think that Ofcom’s figure is slightly misleading, and it’s to do with the way that RAJAR is measured.

I would hypothesise that the actual number of AM listeners is much lower than this for a few reasons:

  • All local London stations, including Absolute Radio, report with a common London transmission area (TSA). Think of the area as essentially being that encompassed by the M25. But anyone who lives just outside the area knows that FM signals actually reach much further than that. It’s possible to just about listen to a London FM station all the way to Swindon as you drive down the M4. So an Absolute Radio listener, somewhere in the commuter belt around London, who listens on an FM radio, has to tick the FM/AM box in a RAJAR diary. And from a reporting perspective, they’ll be thought of as an AM listener. (You might ask why London stations don’t change their TSAs to accurately reflect their coverage, but these things are complicated – all the more so with the fact that London FM stations all use the same TSA to make it easier for London advertising agencies to reach the valuable audience. Outside of London, stations are far more likelier to fine tune their TSAs according to actual geography.)
  • RAJAR determines your listening dependent on where you live. That’s fine in areas where people don’t travel too far to work. But think of someone who lives in, say, Cambridge and commutes into London. If they listen to Absolute on an FM radio all day at work, analysis of their RAJAR data will that listening must be AM because of where they live. You might think this is an edge case, but London has a substantial commuter belt with hundreds of thousands coming into Greater London daily.
  • There will be similar, if less extreme, patterns around the West Midlands.
  • Finally, we know that respondents aren’t necessarily fantastic at filling out RAJAR diaries correctly, and while there are lots of checks to ensure that platforms are correctly recorded, I strongly believe that some listening recorded as AM/FM should actually be recorded as DAB. Most people don’t think about radio transmission formats as much as the average reader of this blog!

When you take into account all of that, I think you could substantially reduce the number of true AM listeners that Ofcom suggests Absolute has. Indeed it’s notable that Bauer doesn’t make this claim itself.

That’s not to say that these closures and reductions won’t have any affect. In rural areas, particularly those with lots of hills, AM (and LW) signals are about the only ones that get through. While the DAB has been built out to reach a large part of the population, there are still pockets with either only the BBC DAB multiplex or perhaps no DAB coverage at all. While satellite TV can fill in the gap at home, that’s not much use if you’re in a vehicle – especially one without DAB.

So turning off the AM network entirely would lose some listeners. But I suspect that it’s far fewer than the RAJAR numbers Ofcom suggests.

Finally, if Absolute was to hand back its AM licence, what would that mean? Well probably not a great deal for the station. It would continue on DAB and all the other platforms. It wouldn’t affect its FM listening in London or the West Midlands. Those are entirely separate licences.

But I believe that Ofcom would have to re-advertise the licence. I think primary legislation would require them to, whether or not they really wanted to. And I suspect that there would be a taker or two. The most obvious would be a Christian station – they often crowdfund their running costs. But there are others who would have a look.

This wouldn’t be a cheap option. Those electricity costs alone are significant. And it’s true that having that licence does allow the owner to get onto the D1 national DAB multiplex. That might be problematical in itself, since the mux is basically full!

And then there are the kit costs. One of the reasons Bauer gives for shutting down many of these transmitters is that the transmission kit is now very old. It dates from BBC ownership prior to the launch of independent national commercial radio, when those frequencies belonged to Radio 3. Replacing that kit is going to cost money, and it seems like an odd investment to be making in 2018.

By the way, have you actually tried to buy an AM radio recently? It’s not that easy…

RAJAR Q4 2017

RAJAR

As ever, this post is brought to you in association with RALF from DP Software and Services. I’ve used RALF for the past 9 years, and it’s my favourite RAJAR analysis tool. So I am delighted that I continue to be able to bring you this RAJAR analysis in association with RALF. For more details on the product, contact Deryck Pritchard via this link or phone 07545 425677.

49.9%, hey?

49.9%.

That’s the percentage of listening that is now digital. So very close to 50%, but just not quite. But I’ll come back to that shortly.

These are a few thoughts on the final RAJAR results for 2017 that are now in, representing the period up to and including 18th December 2017.

Overall radio listening remains at 90% of the UK population listening at least once a week, listening for over a billion hours cumulatively. Those listening hours are down a small amount however, falling 0.9% on the year.

For the record, the mean age of a radio listener is 48 (up from 47) a year ago. But averages are something of a brute instrument to measure listening, particularly when you consider that the population is ageing.

A more useful measure is to look at the number of hours age groups listen to over time. The chart below compares listening by age demo over the last five years, comparing similar quarters.

In general terms the story isn’t too bad, with the notable exception of 15-24s for whom there is a clear downward trend. The reach for this demographic is down to 80.3%, the lowest it has ever been. This is a “problem” group for radio.

Earlier this evening I attended an interesting event organised by the research and analysis company MIDiA, exploring radio in a streaming world. One of the metrics they talked about was the number of listening events people have during the week. While MIDiA’s research compares radio to streaming services which isn’t something that RAJAR allows, RAJAR does let you explore what’s happening with listening events.

This chart is another good way to explain things.

What it shows is the number of different listening events someone has in the course of a week. While a given listening event might be just a few minutes, or conversely many hours, the number of times someone turns to the radio is a decent indicator about how radio is doing as a medium in someone’s life.

I’ve just compared 15-24s with all adults in the above chart, and you can quickly see that there is a decline in the number of times the average 15-24 year old turns on the radio over a relatively short period of time. It’s now less than twice a day. The all adult number is steadier, but the key here is to make it easier for that number to be bumped up, and that will be the challenge radio has to face up to. Can smart speakers introduce more listening events?

But let’s get back to that digital listening figure, as it’s incredibly close to the point whereby half of all listening is through a digital platform.

49.9% is clearly the highest amount of digital listening we’ve yet seen, and I would confidently expect the 50% figure to be breached as soon as next quarter, in the main because I think we’re about see significant growth in radio listening via smart speakers.

Google reported selling 6m speakers globally between October and December, many of them heavily discounted. Amazon doesn’t give out numbers, but reported that the Echo was the biggest selling item on its site over Christmas.

A lot of speakers were sold, and these make very convenient voice controlled radios.

That’s why I think we’ll get to 50% digital listening as soon as the next quarter. But it is also true that these speakers make listening to services like Spotify also much easier. So there’s give and take there.

(It’s worth noting that I’m absolutely not going to round 49.9% up to 50% because we’ve been looking at this number closely for years, and always reporting it to the nearest .1%. To round up now would be wrong and somewhat misleading.)

What I’m not saying is that a great deal will happen very quickly once the 50% mark is breached. While theoretically allows processes to begin for an analogue to digital switchover for radio, I just don’t see that happening very soon. Generally speaking other things are using up lots of Parliamentary time at the moment. Similarly, I suspect that recently announced radio deregulation will take longer than many might hope, because there just isn’t time to fit in the primary legislation required to do anything.

If you dig a little further into the digital figures, then you find that commercial radio is ahead of the BBC in going digital. Commercial radio is 51.6% digital compared with BBC radio at 48.3%. This isn’t too surprising when you consider that BBC radio is generally older than commercial radio – the average of a listener is 50 v 45 for commercial radio. The older you are, the less likely you are to have switched to digital.

National and Digital

Radio 1 had a good quarter this time around, climbing to over 9.8m in reach, representing growth on both the previous quarter and year. Hours spent listening climbed too. The only very slight downside is that the average age of the audience crept up very slightly to 36. But I do think it’s harder to break music listening into age groups as much as would have been the case in the past. Nick Grimshaw also had his best performance at breakfast since Q3 2015, with 5.7m listeners.

Radio 2’s results were decent as well, with reach up 0.8% on the quarter and 2.9% on the year. While hours were up a very healthy 3.6% and 4.5% respectively. 190m listening hours is a new record for Radio 2, and represents 18.3% of all UK radio listening.

Radio 3 was down fractionally in reach on the quarter, but more so on the year. It was a similar picture in terms of hours, but it’s worth noting that Q4 2016 for Radio 3 was something of a freak result, particularly in terms of hours. Radio 3 also had some schedule changes take place during this quarter.

Radio 4 is fractionally up in reach on the quarter and fractionally down on the year. Hours are down 0.8% on the quarter, and a much more significant 8.1% down on the year. But of course, Q4 2016 was a US Presidential election quarter!

Radio 4 Extra reported some record figures being healthily up in reach and hours on both the previous quarter and previous year. It reached 2.26m reach and 13.3m hours this time around.

Five Live had quite a decent bounce from last quarter, up 7.6% in reach. That’s still 4.6% down on the previous year, but there’s a relatively new daytime schedule still bedding in, with some recent further tweaks that won’t yet have hit RAJAR.

Five Live Sports Extra had a small amount of Ashes commentaries in this quarter, although much of the Australian tour will come in Q1. What’s more, there was more summer sport in Q3, so this quarter saw sizeable falls.

6 Music didn’t have a record set of numbers! It was down a little in reach, although up on the quarter in hours. It ticks along very nicely.

Classic FM had a really good set of numbers, up 4.4% on the quarter in reach (up 5.7% on the year), and even greater gains in terms of hours.

Absolute Radio had a good set of numbers too, with reach up 10.9% on the quarter (up 5.9% on the year) and hours up 5.9% on the quarter (up 16.3% on the year). That represents easily the best reach the station has had since it rebranded as Absolute Radio back in 2008. Hours are also at a record level.

Talksport falls a little from last quarter in reach, down 2.2% on the quarter (down 4.8% on the year). More worryingly, hours fell 17.5% on the quarter (down 8.8%) on the year. The only thing I’d note is that there was quite a big swing last quarter, so some of this might be “correction.” The station is benefiting from News UK cross-promotions however, with regular ads to be found in both The Sun and The Times, but I wonder if it needs further refreshment?

It’s sister station Talksport 2 remains a little challenged, with reach down 9.1% on the quarter (but up 5.8% on the year) at 311,000. Hours are more stable, but there is still work to be done in establishing what the station really is – since it’s more than simply a spillover station as Five Live Sports Extra is.

The last few weeks have seen some big changes in the Talkradio line-up with some significant programming investment going into the station – not least signing up Eamonn Holmes, and moving Julia Hartley-Brewer to breakfast in place of Paul Ross. Of course, we’ll have to wait until next quarter to see the first fruits of these changes. In the meantime reach fell 5.5% on the quarter (down 4.0% on the year), while hours rose 6.9% on the quarter (and more than doubled on the year).

The Absolute Radio Network had a great set of figures, closing in on nearly 5m a week across the portfolio of services – a new record. The network was up 4.4% on the quarter (up 3.7% on the year), while hours were up 2.9% on the quarter (up 2.7% on the year). The main Absolute Radio service was the best performer, but it’s notable that Absolute Radio 90s has just won “promotion” to the national D1 multiplex. It’s interesting that Bauer chose not to shuffle the deck a bit and put Absolute 80s back on D1, and put 90s on D2 which has lower coverage. Absolute 80s launched in 2009, and we are now nearly ten years on. Does that mean that 90s is the new 80s, and 80s is in fact what we’d have previously called a “gold” format?

I tend to think that Absolute is being quite smart making a play for 90s, as demographics mean that those in their 30s-40s today grew up with 90s music in their teenage years.

As for Absolute 80s? Well it’s battling on with Heart 80s, and while it’s still ahead, things are getting tight. Recall that Heart 80s has the better D1 coverage.

Absolute 80s fell 3.8% in reach on the quarter (down 3.6% on the year), to 1.47m. Hours fell more down 12.6% on the quarter (down nearly 27% on the year) to 6.4m.

Heart 80s is still on a few months old, but it grew 7.4% in reach to 1.17m, while hours grew 25.3m to 6.1m. That means that the station is on course to overtake Absolute 80s in terms of listening perhaps as soon as next quarter. We’ll have to wait and see about reach.

That raises some interesting questions about loyalty. It turns out that only 200,000 people listen to both stations, suggesting that there’s more than simply having “80s” in your station name. But Heart does seem to be persuading people to make the switch.

Returning to Absolute Radio for a moment, the big question there must be who replaces Christian O’Connell who has recently announced that he will be moving to Australia to take up a new challenge in Melbourne. His reach of 2.1m is second only to Rickie, Melvin and Charlie on Kiss in the commercial radio world, and he’s going to be a tough act to follow. The obvious choice would be Dave Berry who looks to have quickly settled in at Drive on Absolute. But changes in breakfast presenters are always tricky times.

Elsewhere in Bauer, the Magic Network performed well with both reach and hours up. The 3.9m reach of the network is a new record for them. The main Magic station is also doing well.

Kiss is largely speaking flat on the quarter with only small changes, although it’s up on the year. Kisstory is down in reach and hours on the quarter, but it up on the year. Kiss Fresh starts from a lower based, but it up in reach and hours both on the quarter and the year.

Over with Global, the Heart Network saw some falls, with reach down 5.1% on the quarter (down 8.3% on the year), while hours fell 2.9% on the quarter (down 10.2% on the year). There’s a similar story with the Heart Brand which incorporates more than the main network. In London, there’s certainly been some marketing activity recently – I noticed that some of the current bus ads have actually put the FM frequency on them, something that many radio brand ads have shied away from in recent years. But I can’t definitively pinpoint what marketing was done in this quarter nationally.

Capital too has a current marketing campaign underway, in London at least, where they are still trying to bed in Roman Kemp on their breakfast show. Nationally, as with Heart, the network is down a bit, with reach down 4.1% on the quarter (down 4.5% on the year), while hours fell 7.5% on the quarter (down 5.0% on the year).

Radio X is doing well nationally with its best ever figures. Reach is up 3.7% on the quarter (and up a massive 26% on the year), while it’s also up 11.7% on the quarter (and up 26% on the year). Global has invested heavily here, and it looks to be beginning to pay off for them.

LBC is down a little on the quarter, but still up nearly 20% in reach on the year. It seems to have settled at just over 2m listeners a week nationally.

Overall commercial radio fell from 45.3% of all radio listening last quarter to 44.2% of listening this quarter. (It’s still up from last year’s 43.9% however).

On the other hand BBC radio grew from 52.1% of listening to 52.8% of listening this quarter. However it was at 53.5% this time last year.

London

As ever, London sees a certain amount of movement. Things are tight amongst the commercial stations with Capital London just pipping Kiss for the biggest audience in terms of reach.

Capital was down fractionally to 2.1m (although up nearly 22% on the year), while Kiss had a big 8.2% jump to 2.0m reach (up 8.8% on the year).

The tables are turned in terms of listening time however, with Kiss coming out ahead of Capital. Kiss actually saw a fall of 7.2% on the quarter (and a rise of 13.5% on the year), showing just how changeable the London marketplace is. On the other hand Capital’s hours fell more, down 9.2% on the quarter (but up 28% on the year!).

However, LBC still owns the commercial listening crown in London despite also seeing a fall in hours of 7.6% (down 1.6% on the year). Reach was nicely up 9.5% on the quarter (up 15.2% on the year) to 1.2m.

Absolute Radio had a decent reach result in London, up 5.0% on the quarter (up 22% on the year), although hours were down nearly 21% on the quarter (up 22% on the year).

The other station to note in London is Radio X, with its strongest London performance since it rebranded from Xfm. Reach grew 6.5% on the quarter (up 18% on the year), while hours jumped 31% on the quarter (up 12% on the year).

Finally BBC London had a good quarter, increasing 26% in reach on the quarter (and 60% on the year), while hours were up 59% on the quarter (and 99% on the year). It has to be said that BBC London’s figures have been all over the place in recent quarters, hence some of those gains. But reach is in line with recent quarters even if hours seem remarkably high.

Overall those BBC London figures contributed towards a better quarter for the BBC in London than commercial radio. While commercial radio is still ahead of the BBC with 50.3% listening in the capital, it has fallen back from 54.7% last quarter. However it’s still better for commercial than a year ago when the BBC had a rare victory in London.

Further Reading

For more RAJAR analysis, I’d recommend the following sites:

The official RAJAR site and their infographic
Radio Today for a digest of all the main news
Go to Media.Info for lots of numbers and charts
Mediatel’s Newsline will have lots of figures and analysis
Paul Easton for more lots analysis including London charts
Matt Deegan will [probably*] have some great analysis
The BBC Mediacentre for BBC Radio stats and findings
Bauer Media’s corporate site
Global Radio’s corporate site

All my previous RAJAR analyses are here.

Source: RAJAR/Ipsos MORI/RSMB, period ending 18 December 2017, 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.

* The day RAJAR comes out probably isn’t the best time to go for a meal and still leave yourself time to write up what’s happening!

RAJAR MIDAS – Winter 2017 Results

There seems to have been a bit more noise made about this week’s release of RAJAR’s MIDAS data. Recent releases have perhaps appeared a little too closely to the main quarterly RAJAR release. MIDAS stands for “Measurement of Internet Delivered Audio Services” although it doe sa little more than this, particularly when comparing what platforms people are listening to.

The fieldwork for this data release was conducted in November 2017 and that’s important, because we know that bucket loads of connected speakers were sold at Christmas, with heavy discounting from the main players, Amazon and Google. It seems entirely possible that this will have some effect on overall listening behaviours down the line.

The publicly available MIDAS stats are available on the RAJAR website, although subscribers do have access to more detail. Nonetheless, there’s a lot to be looking at, and I’ve tried to add some trend data to the results, going back through previous releases. MIDAS data actually dates back some years, with publication of some that data beginning in 2014. However what is reported has changed over time, with different morsels served up each quarter to keep people interested. Over the last few years however, there has been a little more consistency allowing some trending.

In overall terms, it doesn’t look like a great deal is going on.

Here is the key Share of Audio chart, which breaks out how people listen to different forms of audio. (Hover over these charts with your mouse to see underlying data.)

Live radio is solidly consistent at around 75%, and everything else is far behind radio.

But zoom into the bottom of that first chart and have a closer look.

There is one line significantly on the rise there, and it has close to doubled since the start of 2015. On Demand Music streaming – aka Spotify and its ilk.

(NB. The numbers are all rounded, so 0% listening to vinyl is probably not quite true. It’s just less than 0.5% of all listening)

But the real story comes when you look at some of the sub-demos. I’ll just note that sub-demo data was only made available regularly from the end of 2016.

Here’s the chart for 15-24s:

There’s no need to zoom into the bottom of the chart for this one. Radio is going down. Digital tracks are going down. On Demand Streaming is rising. It has risen from 16% of listening at the start of 2017 to 28% by the year’s end.

As ever, the story for data like this is to be found in trends. In that context, the data for Winter 2016 seems like an outlier, and I’d be more inclined to look at the trend over the calendar year 2017.

Live radio looks set to fall to less than 50% of listening in 2018, and it’s not impossible that On Demand Streaming could overtake it in the next 2-3 years. That’s not completely certain of course, since not everyone in this demographic can afford to pay for premium services like Spotify. But there’s a free version, and family plans exist. Plus households with Amazon Prime get access to their bundled music offering. Plus there certainly doesn’t seem to be any sign of the growth slowing just yet. Radio brands targeting youth age groups take note.

Interestingly, there’s more CD and digital track listening amongst this group than there is among 25-34s. I would guess that this is a cost thing. Younger people with little money and perhaps no access to a streaming service (or the data plans that tend to be needed to listen on the go), are still relying on CDs and digital downloads.

For 25-34s, the story isn’t quite as extreme, and radio is still holding its own, if falling slightly. But again, On Demand Streaming services are rising over time and have become the second largest group, as listening to owned music declines. Also of note for this group is the fact that podcast listening is highest here, with 6% of overall listening is to podcasts. That’s ahead of CD listening for example.

As we get older, so radio becomes more dominant. On Demand Streaming isn’t so prevalent, although this feels like a ripe market for the providers to target, with much more ability to pay £10 a month for the service. CD and digital track ownership are very slightly decreasing, but at a much slower rate.

For the oldest listeners, radio is vastly the most significant form of audio, with only CDs and digital tracks being an alternative. They don’t listen to Spotify and they don’t listen to podcasts. Not yet anyway…

The other thing I’d take from all this data is that vinyl or even cassette listening is not significant. Yes, you can buy vinyl in Sainsburys, and yes the broadsheets are always talking about its revival. These figures would suggest that regardless of sales, its impact in terms of actually being listened to is minimal.

There are a couple more trend lines we can get from MIDAS data.

Podcasting listening is growing, which is as you might expect. 6.1m people listen to podcasts each week, with the smartphone being the most popular device.

Radio apps are also very popular, with 27m (50% of the population) having downloaded an app.

Where radio does have a significant role is in the use of voice activated speakers, and amongst those who use them, the primary uses are for Live Radio and On Demand music services. Radio has a slight advantage here.

Again, I’d note that this is before the slew of speakers sold over Christmas. Amazon said the Echo was its best-selling device, while Google says it has sold 6m since August.

Other bullets from the data:

  • Listen Again isn’t terribly popular, but it skews older, with 77% coming from 35+s
  • Podcasting skews male, with 62% male and 38% female. That’s more skewed than other key forms of listening. An opportunity for some podcasters perhaps?
  • Radio listening is likely to be a solitary affair, with 52% of people listening to the radio on their own. That changes significantly if you’re 15-24, when it’s much likelier to be a social experience. Just 38% of their listening is solo.

There’s more in the release, so have a look if you’re interested.

Methodological note: MIDAS samples tend to be around 2,200 people who are re-contacted by RAJAR’s fieldworkers, having previously completed a regular RAJAR diary. For the most recent release, the fieldwork was conducted in November 2017.

RAJAR Q3 2017

RAJAR

As ever, this post is brought to you in association with RALF from DP Software and Services. I’ve used RALF for the past 9 years, and it’s my favourite RAJAR analysis tool. So I am delighted that I continue to be able to bring you this RAJAR analysis in association with RALF. For more details on the product, contact Deryck Pritchard via this link or phone 07545 425677.

RAJAR comes around again, hot on the heals of last week’s ARIAS. These are largely the summer months, and end on the 17th September. Summers during even years are “quiet” in that there are no major (men’s) football tournaments or Olympic games to disrupt normality. But it’s not unusual for stations to see slight dips in audiences with their listeners going away, or spending more time outside and less time listening.

First of all, a quick update on digital listening.

Last quarter, you will recall, digital listening had reached a record high of 48.7%. So what’s it done this quarter?

48.8%.

It’s slowly creeping upwards, but no real growth over the summer. I still anticipate the magic 50% being reached within the next two quarters however.

National and Digital

Radio 1 had a generally good quarter. Following on from gains last time around, they’re up another 1.2% this quarter (although down slightly on the previous year), to nearly 9.7m listeners. Hours have fallen however, down 4.3% on the previous quarter (although a more modest 0.7% fall on the previous year). As has been mentioned here regularly, the impact of hours is the bigger issue for Radio 1 as their listeners spend less time with radio and more time with other audio and video services.

Radio 2 saw growth of 3.2%, which means nearly 500,000 people. It’s up on the previous year as well. In hours, the results are even better with increases of 5.5% on the quarter and 6.0% on the year. Radio 2 accounts for 17.5% of all radio listening.

Radio 3 had a disappointing quarter, down 4.8% in reach on the quarter (although only down 0.7% on the year), while hours fell 11.9% on the quarter and 9.7% on the year. The station has had some recent changes to its schedule and presenters, but these will take time to bed in.

After some very strong performances, Radio 4 fell back a little this quarter down 2.9% on the quarter (and 3.1% on the year). Hours are much more stable however, and none of this is anything for the station to worry about.

Five Live saw its reach dip 4.7% on the quarter and 7.9% on the year. Hours remained broadly flat. The lack of major sports events over the summer is a likely contributor (although it was a different case for Talksport – see below).

Last quarter I note that 6 Music’s slight fall was likely to be a blip, and so it proved. Reach grew 8.7% on the quarter, and 3.8% on the year, to 2.43m. And what do you know? This represents a new record all time high! Hours increased on the quarter although were still slightly down on the year. The station is clearly fighting fit, and almost certainly among the beneficiaries of an ever growing digital listenership.

1Xtra and Asian Network both got quarterly increases, while the World Service fell back this quarter.

Bauer’s key national brands performed well this quarter.

The Absolute Radio Network increased in reach by 1.6% on the quarter (3.7% on the year) now reaching 4.5m people, although hours fell slightly on the quarter, but still managed 5.2% growth on the year.

Within that, the main Absolute Radio brand bounced back from last quarter with a 16.9% increase in reach (but down 6.9% on last year), while hours grew 19.0% on the quarter (and 13.1% on the year).

Absolute 80s saw some modest growth of 1.3% on the quarter (but down 1.1% on the year) in reach, while hours fell both on the quarter and on the year. It is being chased hard by Heart 80s, which saw reach increase 27.5% on the quarter while hours increased 25.2%. Absolute 80s has 1.532m listeners, while Heart 80s has just past the million mark with 1.086m. In terms of hours Absolute 80s has 7.316m v Heart 80s 4.851m. This is going to be a tight battle of the 80s stations.

The Kiss Network itself achieved a record reach of 5.7m, up 5.4% on the quarter (4.8% on the year), with hours growing a substantial 18.7% on the quarter (5.3%) on the year. Kisstory continues to do well with 1.8m reach (up 5.1% on the quarter (13.2% on the year), giving it a new record reach and solidifying its position as the biggest commercial digital-only station.

The Magic Network reach also was a record, with 3.7m listeners, up 3.2% on the quarter. Mellow Magic is the biggest sub-brand with 519,000 but essentially flat on the quarter.

Over at Global, there are some slight declines at the two biggest brands. The Heart Brand (which includes all the Heart stations including digital sub-brands) is flat, slightly falling 0.7% on the quarter (and falling 1.2%) on the year. Hours are up on the quarter however. I’ve already noted that Heart 80s is doing well, and Heart Extra is up on the quarter, but down somewhat on the year. The Heart Network represents all the local Heart stations around the country, and that’s also flat in reach (down 0.8% on the quarter and down 1.2% on the year), while hours are down 5.7% on the quarter (and down 1.2% on the year).

For the Capital Brand, the reach is again basically flat, and hours are up a fraction. Capital XTRA is doing well, up 22.6% in reach on the quarter (and 10.6% on the year), while the main local network is down a little in reach (down 3.7% on both the quarter and year), but flat in hours.

LBC has had another strong set of results, up 2.3% on the quarter (and 15.7% on the year), with hours increasing even more. The station continues to make news with its political presenters – even the stand-ins!

The Smooth Brand had a decent set of results, up across the board, while Radio X performed very well, up 9.5% in reach (20.4% on the year), and up 5.6% in hours this quarter (up 15.5% on the year).

Finally, Classic FM fell back a bit this quarter down 6.0% in reach and down 8.8% in hours. On the year it fared better.

Over at Wireless Group, Talksport had a decent quarter despite a lack of major sport. Reach was up 11.6% on the quarter, while hours were up 31.5% over the same period. The numbers weren’t quite as strong on the year, but the station is closing in on 3m again.

Sister station Talksport2 is also up a little on the quarter, up 1.8% in reach, but down 11.8% in hours.

It wasn’t a good quarter for Talkradio, which is still struggling to find its feet. Reach is down 6.9% on the quarter (and down 15.8% on the year), while hours were down 0.4% on the quarter (but down 17.8% on the year).

Virgin Radio, on the other hand, had a very strong quarter, seeing reach grow a steller 52.7% on the quarter (up 61.2% on the year), with hours up 39.6% on the quarter (and 24.8% on the year). And this all pre-dates Sam and Amy taking over breakfast from Edith Bowman.

London

As ever Radio 4 is London’s real number one. But nobody wants to know about that. How are the music stations doing?

Well Capital is number one in reach, although last quarter’s numbers have taken a bit of a hit. Reach is down 8.1% on the quarter, but up 5.6% on the year. Hours are flat on the quarter but up on the year. This was still early days for Capital’s new Roman Kemp breakfast show. However that’s not good enough to be number one in hours terms. That accolade goes to…

LBC. Their FM reach (AM is a different station) are actually down a 21.3% on the quarter, and hours down a massive 22.9%, but both are up on the year, and last quarter’s figures were massive, so a fall was on the cards. A reminder – I always say you should look at longer term trends than one off results.

As for Kiss? They are down on the quarter in terms of reach, dipping below 2m again. Down 8.7% on the quarter (although up 2.8% on the year). However hours are somewhat extraordinarily up 35.4% to 11.5m in London (that’s a 25.3% increase on the year). That’s the station’s largest hours for a couple of years.

Heart has dropped away a bit, to 1.515m reach, down 10.9% on the quarter (and down 10.0% on the year). Hours have suffered worse though, falling from 8.9m to 7.3m – a 17.8% drop on the quarter and 20.5% fall on the year. That’s not great news for the brand’s flagship station.

Magic has recently changed breakfast show too, with Ronan Keating and Harriet Scott taking charge over the summer. But they’re only partially included here. The station is flat in reach on the quarter (but down 14.6% on hte year), while hours have increased on the quarter, up 13.7%, but are still 11.3% down on the year.

Radio X is pretty flat with reach up 0.4% on the quarter (but 25.4% up on the year), and hours drifting slightly, down 2.5% on the quarter and down 3.2% on the year.

Finally BBC London, which had some record figures last quarter, has seen them fall back a bit, down 26.9% in reach (although up 7.1% on the year), while hours are down 20.6% on the quarter (although up a very similar amount on the year).

The London market is still volatile in the way it’s reported, although as I mentioned at the start, we have to be a little wary over the summer months.

Note

I seem to have written this quarter’s results without using a single chart. I’ll try to right that next time around!

Further Reading

For more RAJAR analysis, I’d recommend the following sites:

The official RAJAR site and their infographic
Radio Today for a digest of all the main news
Go to Media.Info for lots of numbers and charts
Mediatel’s Newsline will have lots of figures and analysis
Paul Easton for more lots analysis including London charts
Matt Deegan will have some great analysis
The BBC Mediacentre for BBC Radio stats and findings
Bauer Media’s corporate site
Global Radio’s corporate site

All my previous RAJAR analyses are here.

Source: RAJAR/Ipsos MORI/RSMB, period ending 17 September 2017, 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.

RAJAR Q2 2017

RAJAR

As ever, this post is brought to you in association with RALF from DP Software and Services. I’ve used RALF for the past 9 years, and it’s my favourite RAJAR analysis tool. So I am delighted that I continue to be able to bring you this RAJAR analysis in association with RALF. For more details on the product, contact Deryck Pritchard via this link or phone 07545 425677.

RAJAR is upon us once more, and so this will be something of a canter through the results. However, I’ll also throw in a few pieces from the most recent RAJAR MIDAS survey that was also recently published, and is very illuminating.

I think I will start with digital listening, since we’re now incredibly close to half of all radio listening being on a digital platform. In this quarter it reached a high of 48.7% of all listening being digital, up from 47.2% last quarter and 45.3% a year ago.

You can see from this chart that progress has been constant over that time. And of course DAB radio is the largest part of that listening. But it’s always worth having a look at internet listening, because that seems to be growing much faster. Apps improve, and data packages increase. You may even have seen improved 4G coverage!

Internet listening is now up to 8.8% of all radio listening. Also a new high.

If you just look at 15-44s, then internet listening goes up to 14.6%. This is becoming an important platform.

Overall 49.2m people listen to the radio each week – an all time high. Although we should be careful to note that RAJAR updates its population estimates in Q2 each year, and as the UK’s population continues to rise, you would expect listening to rise – even if radio listening is actually “flat.” And so it is that 90% of the population listen to the radio, which is in line with previous quarters.

Each radio listens for 21.0 hours a week, which actually represents – just – a record low under the current RAJAR methodology. This isn’t necessarily surprising, since as I’ve said here before, it’s not so much reach and listening hours that are challenging radio the most, particularly in younger demos. But average hours are worth keeping an eye on.

National and Digital Services

Radio 1 will be pleased to have bounced back from some awful results last time around. They are back up to nearly 9.6m listeners, representing an increase of 5.3% on the quarter and a 1.4% increase on the year. In terms of listening hours, they’ve done very well this time with 64.3m hours which is the best they’ve had for nearly two years now. Last quarter does look much more like a “blip”, but this audience remains challenging and other metrics undoubtedly come into play as far as the station goes.

Radio 2 saw a small decrease across the board in its listening figures, with a fall below 15m for the first time in a few quarters. Notably hours fell too, down 6.0% on the quarter and down 3.0% on the year. But with 14.8m listeners tuning in for an average of 11.7 hours a week, they’re not exactly struggling. Obviously we do now know that their presenters are generally fairly well remunerated!

Radio 3 saw its reach breach 2m again, up 9.4% on the quarter, yet down 6.3% on the year in reach terms. There was a similar trend with hours.

Radio 4 had a stronger quarter in reach terms, rising to 11.6m. By the skin of its teeth, that’s a new record reach for the station, breaking the previous reach set in Q2 last year. Obviously there continue to be one or two things in the news which may well be helping. Hours were down a bit on the quarter, however, while being up on the year.

Five Live had a second successive disappointing quarter, being fractionally down in reach on the quarter, but more substantially down on the year. They’ll be keeping an eye on hours too, with 35.0m down 14.5% on the 41.0m they had a year ago. Obviously there’s no major football tournament this year, and the end of the football season wasn’t quite the story it was a year ago.

In a massive shock, 6 Music has somehow not achieved a record audience this quarter! Reach is down 4.9% to 2.2m, while hours dip below 20m. The latter in particular feels a bit like a blip and will be worth returning to next quarter.

I’ll note that the World Service is up 19.4% in reach terms this quarter, and 28.5% up on the quarter in terms of hours.

LBC has had another exceptional quarter, up 14.5% to 2.0m, and up 11.8% to 21.6m listening hours. These are both records in terms of the station in modern times, since it went national. The station really is going from strength to strength.

Absolute Radio was down 3.0% on the quarter and a little more on the year to 2.1m, while hours were down 1.8% on the quarter, but up 15.8% on the year. Absolute obviously has Dave Berry beginning his new drivetime show from this October, while this quarter (just) saw the departure of longtime presenters Geoff Lloyd and Annabel Port from that slot. We won’t truly be able to see the outcome of that change until the Q4 figures come out early in 2018.

Classic FM had a strong quarter with reach up 7.8% to 5.8m, while hours were up nearly 16% to 40.3m. Those both represent the best numbers the station has had since the first half of 2011, so a really great set of results for the team in Leicester Square.

Talksport on the other hand, has not had a good set of numbers this quarter. They’re down 3.9% in reach on the quarter, and down 20.3% in reach on the year. Hours are worse, down 16.6% on the quarter, and down 28.2% on the year. As with Five Live, there’s been no major football tournament this summer, and the end of the season wasn’t perhaps as exciting as in some other years. However, the reach is the worst since 2010, and hours the worst since the end of 2003. You must think that News UK can help the station with some solid marketing, but also wonder if we’ll see some significant programme changes. Some of those audience losses can be balanced against some growth in Talksport 2, which achieved its best results so far, with 336,000 reach and just short of 1m hours.

Talkradio has also seen some positive shifts, with its reach and hours both healthily up in percentage terms. It now has 275,000 reach with 1.1m hours. Those results put the station about on a par with Virgin Radio which was down in reach but up in hours on the quarter. It has 364,000 listeners spending 1.1m hours with it. The challenge for Wireless Group (and owners News UK) was always supporting all these new brands over the early part of their existence. Speech radio in particular is not necessarily a cheap format.

The Capital Network jumps back up 3.8% in reach and 3.1% in hours this quarter, with the overall brand (including Capital XTRA) similarly improving. Overall they have a reach of 8.6m reach with 48.4m hours. Does Global have Radio 1 in its sights?

Sister Heart Network is basically flat in reach, and down 3.6% in hours on the previous quarter. The overall Heart Brand is up 2.8% in reach but down 0.9% in hours. It reaches 9.2m a week with 67.0m hours. A recent trip to the cinema suggest that they’re spending on the brand currently (although the cheery ad perhaps felt at odds with Dunkirk, which we were about to see).

Over at Kiss, reach is up 4.6% to nearly 4.4m, while hours are down slightly 2.8% on the quarter. The overall Kiss Network (including the very successful Kisstory which itself achieved record figures of 1.7m reach and 7.5m hours) is up 6.4% in reach although down 2.0% in hours.

The Magic Network has seen its audience grow 2.0% to 3.6m this quarter (down a little on the year), while hours have slipped 3.5% on the quarter and about the same on the year.

Finally let’s enter the battle of the 80s. Absolute 80s has increased its reach this quarter by 11.3% to 1.5m, although it’s slightly down on the year, and hours have fallen 9.4% to 7.4m. They’re the lowest they’ve been since Q3 2014.

So what’s happened, and why did I call this a battle? Well Heart 80s has happened. They’ve come in with a reach of 852,000, which is slightly over half the reach of Absolute 80s. Meanwhile they’ve got 3.9m listening hours – again just over half what Absolute 80s achieved.

I would imagine that Global will be delighted with those numbers, while Bauer is disappointed. I’ve mentioned previously that Bauer moved from the Digital One DAB multiplex to the presumably cheaper D2 multiplex. However, that multiplex covers significantly less of the population, and that move in itself saw a decrease in listening almost certainly as a direct consequence. In the meantime. Global saw an opportunity to put a new 80s service on Digital One, and Heart 80s is the result. You can assume that some listeners who lost access to Absolute 80s on DAB have now started listening to Heart 80s. While Absolute 80s is comfortably ahead as things stand, that has got to be a mini-battle worth watching in the future.

London

As ever, the biggest station in London in reach is… Radio 4. It’s up 7.4% in reach. But nobody ever wants to hear that. They want to know about the music stations.

The next biggest station in reach terms is Capital, who’ve had another great result, up 3.3% in reach 2.3m. Hours are up a bit too.

Kiss has had a good result this quarter, and is just behind (if we exclude Radio 2) with 2.0m listeners up 13.8% on the quarter, although down on the year. That’s quite a bounce back for Kiss. Hours are up a little too.

Then it’s Heart with 1.7m listeners, up an astonishing 21.9% after a couple of really poor quarters. Again, listening is down a little.

Skipping past Radio 1, we get to LBC with 1.4m listeners, up 31.6% this quarter, and up 9.2% on the year. But of course it’s the hours of LBC that really do well with 15.7m hours, it can rightly claim to be London’s most listened to commercial station (Radio 4 has more).

Absolute Radio is struggling in London right now with 637,000 listeners, down 17.6% on the quarter and more than 25% on the year.

But I’d finally just note that BBC London is up a colossal 88.8% on the quarter in reach terms and 156% in hours to 621,000 and 3.3m hours. Now while I’m dubious about massive jumps either up or down, 621,000 represents an all time record reach for the station under the current RAJAR methodology!

MIDAS

Finally, I thought that it was worth having a little look at the recently published RAJAR MIDAS survey. This examines listening against other types of audio listening, including on demand music streaming (OMS) services such as Spotify, mp3s, vinyl and so on. It’s important to note that the research is carried out separately to the main RAJAR survey, and as such, isn’t directly comparable. Nonetheless, the most recent set of data was published last week, and it seems as good a time as any to check out some numbers.

It’s always worth looking at the Share of Audio % which shows what radio is “up against.” Some might think that radio’s very retro, and that nobody listens to anything other than Spotify and podcasts, because that’s what they do as a cutting edge media-type. Of course this isn’t true as the chart below shows.

Share of Audio - Summer 2017

That chart shows that live radio dominates listening with 76% of (non-visual) audio. That’s down very slightly from 77% in the last spring release. Other facts that come out of the survey include:

  • 26m people, or 49% of the population haved downloaded a radio app for their phone, with on average users have 2 apps.
  • 5.6m adults listen to a podcast in any week, with smartphones being the most popular device. That’s up from 5.5m in the spring MIDAS survey.
  • 4.2m adults use listen again or catch-up services.

Obviously listening trends change substantially by age group.

You can instantly see that OMS listening is the most significant difference between age groups. Amongst 15-24s, this listening accounts for 23% of all listening, while only accounting for 1% of listening amongst 55+’s.

The growth in listening to OMS amongst 15-24s is quite alarming. There’s no other way to put it, since in Winter 2016 it was 21%. How big will this slice of the pie continue to grow to?

What devices are people using? Well analogue and digital radios are at the top of the list in terms of share, but it really depends on how old you are. For 15-24s, the smartphone is key – and there’s often not a radio built into these (or if there is, it’s pretty bad). But computers are also really important for this group. Only 36% of their time is spend with traditional radios compared with 62% overall.

One final thing worth looking at is what people are listening to by device. I wanted to highlight this, because the Amazon Echo is included. Now, although I don’t have the full data tables for MIDAS research, I suspect that the Amazon data will be on very small sample sizes, so should be treated with caution. However, if it’s in any way indicative, it shows that Voice User Interface devices like the Echo could be very important ways of listening to the radio in the future. Ahead of any other internet connected device that MIDAS measured, more live radio was consumed on the Echo.

As someone who owns two Echos, I can attest to the fact that it’s easily the most painless way of listening to the radio full-stop. You just bark your order at the device and it starts!

(I will note that “digital tracks” don’t seem to show up in the Echo’s results, and since you can listen to services like Spotify and Amazon Music on the devices, I would be very wary of the absolute numbers here. Something to watch in future. [UPDATE: Actually, I was misreading the chart. The “On Demand” represents On Demand Music Services including Spotify. It’s actually personally owned Digital Tracks that you can’t really play via an Echo and is therefore missing – well you can but it’s very fiddly and limited. Thanks to Mike for pointing this out. I still suspect the sample is small, so would be wary of absolute numbers, but the fact remains that Live Radio is crucial part of the Echo audio experience.])

The full publicly available summary is available here on the RAJAR website.

Further Reading

For more RAJAR analysis, I’d recommend the following sites:

The official RAJAR site and their infographic
Radio Today for a digest of all the main news
Go to Media.Info for lots of numbers and charts
Mediatel’s Newsline will have lots of figures and analysis
Paul Easton for more lots analysis including London charts
Matt Deegan will have some great analysis
The BBC Mediacentre for BBC Radio stats and findings
Bauer Media’s corporate site
Global Radio’s corporate site

All my previous RAJAR analyses are here.

Source: RAJAR/Ipsos MORI/RSMB, period ending 25 June 2017, 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.

RAJAR Q1 2017

RAJAR

Once again, this post is brought to you in association with RALF from DP Software and Services. I’ve used RALF for the past 9 years, and it’s my favourite RAJAR analysis tool. So I am delighted that I continue to be able to bring you this RAJAR analysis in association with RALF. For more details on the product, contact Deryck Pritchard via this link or phone 07545 425677.

It’s RAJAR time again, when the UK radio industry releases a new set of listening figures. And this is the first release of 2017, featuring a smattering of new stations.

In overall terms, there are a few declines this time around. Overall radio is down 2.4% in terms of listening compared with the previous quarter, although it is up 1.7% on the same time last year. Reach too is down slightly on the quarter but up on the year.

In particular, BBC radio seems to have taken a bit of a hit this quarter, being down 2.9% in reach and 3.6% in hours; whereas commercial radio is only down 1.2% in reach and down 0.8% in hours.

In reach terms, the BBC and commercial radio remain very evenly with matched with commercial radio just edging the BBC with 64% reach compared to the BBC’s 63%. While in share terms, the BBC has 53% of radio listening compared with commercial radio’s 45% (the other two percent or so is non-RAJAR measured radio services).

Overall 89% of the population continue to listen to the radio at least once a week – a figure that has remained constant for many years now.

Digital share is something everyone in the industry pays attention to, and it’s now up to 47.2% of all listening being digital – that’s a big jump in the post Christmas RAJAR period. And it’s really closing in the symbolic 50% digital level.

National and Digital Services

It hasn’t been the best quarter for Radio 1, with reach down 4.8% on last quarter and down 8.1% on last year. It now reaches 9.1m people a week. Five years ago it was reaching 11.1m a week. Obviously its target audience is the most challenging of the BBC’s radio services to target, as I’ve said on many occassions before. While listening was again down on the quarter, it was actually up fractionally on the year. Again, Radio 1 will look to its iPlayer and YouTube footprint.

Radio 2 is also down a little both on the previous quarter and the previous year in terms of reach. But it’s nothing to write home about, and the station remains vastly larger than any other in the country (and many other stations in the world – although I would point to the BBC World Service English service reaching 66m a year…). Hours are very strong though, and although it they’re down slightly on this time last year, those were record numbers then. Radio 2 is still a beast of a station.

Radio 3 had what can only be described as a disappointing quarter, down 11% in reach on both last quarter and last year. Hours were particularly poor, down nearly 20% on last quarter and 15% down on the year. It’s not clear to me what’s happened, but the current listening levels are within the bounds of what it has done previously over the last few years.

While Radio 4 has fallen away from it’s Brexit high a couple of quarters ago, it’s still 5% up on the year in reach and nearly 6% up on the year in hours. This is a good set of numbers, and the station has had a reach of over 11m for four quarters in a row now, when historically 10m was more its norm. Sister station Radio 4 Extra has also had decent numbers.

Five Live has had a disappointing set of numbers too – perhaps not able to capitalise on such a fairy tale Premier League season. It’s down 6.5% in reach on last quarter and down 7.5% on the year. While hours aren’t as bad, it’s interesting that in these highly politicised times, Radio 4 continues to do well, but 5 Live doesn’t.

6 Music, needless to say, confounds all of this. It’s up in everything meaning that it has also once again set record reach and hours figures. It has 2.351m listeners spending 23.4m hours a week with it.

As with Five Live, Talksport hasn’t done so well this quarter, being down 9% on the quarter and 12% on the year in terms of reach. Hours are much better with even a slight uptick on the quarter. Although with less than 3m reach and 20m hours, they will want to do better. Sister station Talksport 2 showed a slight dip on this quarter still hovering around the 250,000-300,000 range for its reach. Hours are a bit more concerning being 10% down on the quarter.

Talkradio got a bump in hours, but is down a little in reach to 238,000. While I’m convinced that there’s room for more speech radio, perhaps it needs further tweaking. Meanwhile Virgin Radio was up in reach and up in hours. While it has yet to return to the levels of the first set of numbers it posted, this at least is encouraging.

Classic FM ticks on by, flat in reach on the quarter, but up nearly 5% on the year. Hours are down slightly on the quarter but up nearly 7% on the year. It comfortably stays north of 5m listeners and has around 35m listening hours putting it in a good place.

Absolute Radio is up slightly on the quarter, and essentially flat on the year in terms of reach. Hours is much better story, with something of a bounce back from last quarter, being up 12%. Across the entire Absolute Radio Network, reach is down a little, but hours are up, and the brand has 4.2m reach and 33m hours (similar to the size of Classic, but with a much more valuable target audience for advertisers).

Radio X is making solid progress nationally up 5% on the quarter in reach and up 6% on the year. Hours are also up, and with a fair wind, it should break 10m listening hours within the next quarter or two. It certainly seems to have some traction.

LBC nationally is performing outstandingly well. it has just short of 1.8m listeners (up 6% on the quarter and up 16% on the year), while hours are closing in to 20m. Listening is up a whopping 27% on the year! This is one station aside from Radio 4 that really is prospering right now.

Capital is doing decently across its whole brand. While reach and hours are down a little on the quarter, they’re up on the year, and the brand still has 8.3m listeners spending 47m hours across the various Capital stations.

The Heart Network and Brand’s listeners (the latter includes Heart Extra) have drifted away a little in recent quarters and this is no exception. Nothing stunning, but still downwards. It’ll be interesting to see if a recent new TV ad does much to turn its fortunes around.

The Magic Network got bolstered this month (see below), but it was still down a little in reach. Hours are better, with now more than 20m Magic hours across the network. Magic too has recently invested in a TV ad, the results of which won’t hit until next quarter.

The Kiss Network has fallen back a little for the second quarter in a row, with a reach still just ahead of 5m, while hours have fallen back below 30m. The brand has done really well to maintain its audience when you compare it with the difficulties Radio 1 has had.

The Smooth Brand is not one I think about a lot, but it’s a real performer for Global with 5.4m reach and nearly 40m hours. It dipped a little this quarter but is a very solid performer if it can hang on to that listening.

Finally a couple of new stations. Union Jack, which has been on the air for several months now, has posted a reach of 71,000 with 265,000 hours. It’s a low cost station (broadcasting at easily the lowest bitrate of any DAB music services), but it probably needs a larger audience in due course.

Meanwhile Magic Soul, which began as a summer pop-up, has a reach of 242,000 and hours of not inconsequential 1.3m. A decent enough start for the service from Bauer.

Finally there’s Share Radio. It has just announced that will be coming off DAB soon, continuing as an online-only service. It posted its first set of numbers, with 17,000 reach and 40,000 hours. The difficulty the station has is that it’s demographic target market is far too specialist for RAJAR to accurately capture. It’s analogous to Bloomberg TV which previously came off BARB in the UK because although the service is definitely on in the right offices and on the right trading floors, it’s not something that the BARB panel can easily pick up.

Breakfast

I’ll leave others to spend more time on breakfast, but Nick Grimshaw saw his show fall as the overall station did. He’s down 4.2% in reach on the quarter and 5.4% down on the year. Unfortunately for him, that’s the lowest Radio 1 breakfast show figure since the current RAJAR methodology started back in 1999.

Over on Radio 2, Chris Evans put on nearly 2% to his audience this quarter – that’s nearly 9.4m listeners. Down a little on this time last year, but still a very successful show.

In commercial terms, Bauer has the top two shows in the Kiss breakfast show with Rickie, Melvin and Charlie with 2.1m listeners, while Christian O’Connell across the Absolute Radio Network is just behind with 1.9m listeners.

London

Who’s number one in London? Well of course it’s actually Radio 4. But you probably want to know how the commercial rivals stack up.

Capital can still shout loudly about that position. With 2.2m listeners, it’s jumped a frankly unlikely 30% on the quarter bouncing back from last quarter’s low. Looking back, that really does look like a freak quarter. Kiss is the next closest in reach with 1.8m listeners.

However in hours terms, LBC gets the crown with 11.5m hours (up 28% on the year!). This compares with 10.8m for Capital and 9.2m for Heart.

(Sorry, I’ve just realised I managed this report without a single chart. I promise to do better in future!)

Further Reading

For more RAJAR analysis, I’d recommend the following sites:

The official RAJAR site and their infographic is here
Radio Today for a digest of all the main news
Go to Media.Info for lots of numbers and charts
Mediatel’s Newsline will have lots of figures and analysis
Paul Easton for more lots analysis including London charts
Matt Deegan will have some great analysis
Media Guardian for more news and coverage
The BBC Mediacentre for BBC Radio stats and findings
Bauer Media’s corporate site
Global Radio’s corporate site

Source: RAJAR/Ipsos MORI/RSMB, period ending 2 April 2017, 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.