Q4 RAJAR figures, released this afternoon, show that whilst overall radio listening has remained pretty static year on year (up by just 0.2% to give an average weekly reach of 40.32 million listeners), national commercial weekly reach has slipped slightly, down by 4.9% to 11.18 million (23%). All commercial radio, however, made a very slight gain in weekly reach, up by 0.2% to 23.77 million listeners (60%). All BBC stations gained 0.6% with an average reach of 26.73 million (56%).
The loss of reach for the national commercial stations has been offset by a slight gain from the local commercial sector. All local commercial stations report a slight increase in weekly reach, up from 49% to 51%.
In terms of share of listening, the commercial sector has held on to its lead over the BBC with share split 48.5% to 49.3% in commercial’s favour. However, the gap between the two is closing: commercial’s lead over the BBC in terms of share of listening is now only 0.8% – at the same point last year commercial held a 1.6% lead. This is the result of a 0.2% points drop in share for commercial and a 0.6% points increase for the BBC.
Radio 1 increased its weekly reach by 2.9% to an average of 9.76 million listeners. Virgin FM was up by 7.9% to achieve an average weekly reach of 1.11 million adults (15+). Virgin AM, however, suffered a loss of 275,000 listeners, or 8.3%, taking its reach down to 3.04 million (6%).
Speech-based stations have not performed particularly well in this quarter with Radio 4, Radio 5 and Talk Radio all reporting year on year falls in weekly reach. Classic FM, on the other hand, had a strong quarter adding to 4.7% to its weekly reach which stood at 5.14 million listeners.
Q4 1998 RAJAR data is now available in the Radio database, and more detailed reports will appear on Newsline shortly.
