Rajar Q4 2013: Round-up
Rajar has today announced 91% of the adult (15+) UK population – 48.4 million people – tuned in to their selected radio stations in the final quarter of 2013. This is up by approximately 1.4 million adults on the same quarter of the previous year.
The total average number of weekly hours of radio listened to for this quarter is 1.03 billion.
Here is Newsline’s round-up of the results for the national stations and networks and the digital, London and breakfast markets.
National stations and networks
Total Global Radio UK has maintained its dominance over the national stations and networks, despite dropping its weekly reach by -2.2% on the previous quarter.
The latest Rajar results for the final quarter of 2013 reveal the network’s reach stood at an impressive 19.9 million and was up 3.6% year on year.
BBC Radio 2 held on to its second place position with a little over 15.5 million weekly listeners, up 3.9% on the third quarter and up 2.7% year on year.
Bauer Radio Total Portfolio also continues to perform well, up 1% on Q3 and up 8.8% on last year. With a weekly reach of more than 14.4 million listeners, the network was up 150,000 on the last period.
After a small decline in performance for BBC Radio 1 in the third quarter, the station was up 1.3 – with a reach close to 11 million each week – but was down -1.1% YoY.
A success story in the Q3 results, BBC’s Five Live Sports Extra dropped -41.6% in the final quarter to settle for 889,000 weekly listeners – a drop of 633,000. Despite the drop, the station was still up a healthy 5% YoY.
Good news for BBC 6 Music which was up a healthy 13.3% on the third quarter – bagging almost two million weekly listeners. The digital-only station also saw year on year growth of 3.8%.
It was also good news for Kiss UK, with the Bauer network seeing a 18.1% YoY increase – maintaining its five million weekly reach for two consecutive quarters.
Total Absolute Radio Network, was up 4.6% in Q4 – and 7.5% over the year to reach more than 3.5 million listeners.
TalkSPORT also made positive gains – up 7.4% in Q4 and up 5.9% YoY taking its reach to a yearly high of more than 3.2 million. Good news too for Classic FM – with the station enjoying 5.9% growth in the winter period to record more than 5.6 million listeners.
After a wobble in the third quarter, Total Absolute Radio Network also saw modest growth to reach a little over 3.5 million listeners each week (up 4.6% this quarter and up 7.5% YoY).
A rebrand for Bauer’s Smash Hits to Kiss Fresh has, so far, not worked quite so well, with the station dropping its reach by -61% over the year. The station was down -56.4% on the previous quarter to secure just 387,000 listeners each week.
Digital
The latest Rajar results for the fourth quarter of 2013 show that the share of all radio listening via a digital platform was up 10% year on year (YoY), with 27.7 million (52%) people now tuning in to radio via a digitally enabled receiver each week.
91% of the adult (15+) population tunes in to radio every week – be that analogue or digital – equating to over 48 million adult radio listeners.
Of these, the share of radio listening via a digital platform now stands at 36.1% (up 9% YoY).
In the final quarter of 2013, the number of adults with access to a DAB receiver was up 10% to 24 million, while digital listening hours increased 9% to 371 million.
In terms of devices, DAB radio remained the most popular, accounting for 65% of all digital hours, followed by online (16%) and digital TV (14%). However, online saw the biggest percentage increase, up 17% YoY compared with DAB’s 10% rise.
Listening via a mobile device also saw a significant increase, up 32% YoY. This increases to 45% in the 15-24 year old demographic – a 23% yearly rise.
London
Global Radio led the London ranks with Capital London – ending the quarter with an average weekly reach of nearly 2.2 million, despite being down -0.6% QoQ. The station’s year on year figure, however, was much more positive, up 8.7%.
Global’s good fortune didn’t carry throughout, however, as Heart London and LBC 97.3 reported weekly reach declines close to -11% QoQ, while the biggest loss of the quarter belonged to the network’s LBC News 1152, down -36.2% and shedding 130,000 listeners.
Although Bauer managed to secure the second and third spots with Kiss 100 FM and Magic 105.4 (London), both stations reported quarterly losses – down -7.5% and -10.7%, respectively.
Despite seeing a huge decrease in listeners in Q3, Total Absolute Radio London increased its weekly reach by an impressive 17.1% in the fourth quarter, netting over 100,000 extra listeners, while Absolute Radio London grew its weekly reach by 13.8% QoQ, adding an extra 70,000.
Breakfast
National
The latest Rajar results reveal a small change of fortune to the Radio 1 Breakfast Show, which has seen listeners dwindling over the past year.
As Radio 1 continues its youth push – announcing the surpassing of one million subscribers to its YouTube channel last week – Nick Grimshaw’s Breakfast Show has recorded a 12.7% increase in weekly listeners compared with the previous quarter, taking it closer to the 6.7 million that the show recorded in Q4 2012.
6.3 million listeners tuned in for the breakfast slot, with features including Call or Delete and The Nixtape, signalling that the previously struggling Breakfast Show – which saw a huge chunk of listeners flee along with Chris Moyles in 2012 – may be on the road to recovery.
BBC Radio 2’s Chris Evans Breakfast Show continued to lead the ranks with over 9.8 million listeners in Q4 – up 5% quarter on quarter (QoQ) – while BBC Radio 4’s 4.8% QoQ lift took the station back above the seven million mark.
Global-owned Classic FM celebrated the greatest quarterly percentage increase, up 12.7% QoQ, with Bauer’s Kiss UK and Total Absolute Radio Network also recording increases, up 4.6% and 8.2%, respectively.
talkSPORT was the only station to report a decrease in listeners over the quarter, down -3.3% to just under 1.39 million.
London
Global’s Capital London came out on top in the fourth quarter, up 10.3% QoQ to almost 1.2 million weekly listeners – a vast improvement on the -2.3% hit it took in the third quarter.
There was bad news for the group elsewhere, however, with Heart London (-5.7%), LBC (-8.4%), XFM London (-12.6%) and LBC News 1152 (-26.8%) all down across the quarter.
The second and third-spot places belonged to Bauer, with Kiss up 21.7% QoQ to 824,000 and Magic up 10.9% QoQ to 714,000.
Despite recording a marginal quarterly increase, Total Absolute Radio Network’s 2.3% rise wasn’t enough to redeem the network from the yearly -20% drop in listeners, settling with a weekly reach of 488,000.
While Smooth Radio saw a 28.7% increase in listeners over the quarter, it was down an even bigger -28.8% listeners YoY, reaching a total of 166,000 in Q4 2013, compared with 233,000 for the same period in 2012.
National
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London
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