Rajar Q4 2015: Industry reaction

Will You, D2?

Next month will see the launch of the first stations on the UK’s second national commercial DAB multiplex, D2. While there are some unknowns around the upgraded DAB service DAB+ that will accompany it, space for 18 or so new stations should give a decent boost to the growth of digital radio over the course of the year. With this in mind, it’s a good time to review the Quarter 4 2015 Rajar data released today, from a digital perspective.

Overall, 42% of all listening hours are on a digital platform – more than half of this comes from DAB. Although this is pretty much the same as last quarter, a year ago the figure stood at 38% – a 10% year on year increase.

There are some other positives that can be seen throughout the rest of the data. The most listened to digital only station, BBC 6 Music, attracted some 2.2m listeners a week – another station record.

Meanwhile, Absolute 80s has also done well, maintaining its 1.6m listeners from last time to remain the top digital commercial station and third biggest digital only station overall. Rajar also collects information on DAB ownership. An all-time high of 28.9 million people now own a DAB set – around 140,000 more people than in the previous quarter.

This shows that people are continuing to listen on DABs and are continuing to buy them. We usually see an increase in the number of people owning DABs in Quarter 1 after a Christmas boost. Combine this with the gradual launch of the D2 stations and we should find that the digital numbers continue to grow as we go through 2016.

The main story from a neutral perspective is that the Rajars were always going to be the first published figures of Radio X since its high-profile re-launch from XFM back in September. An increase in listening was never in question given the move to the national DAB1 platform and big marketing push.

The reach of 1.23m marks a record for the station, whilst listening hours (6.9m) are at an eight-year high. That said, a 284k YoY weekly listener increase (+30%) amidst all this doesn’t look too amazing when you consider that LBC London News has shown a 93% YoY (235k) increase and Capital Xtra an +44% (359k) increase.

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Neither of those had the marketing hype and indeed, LBC London News doesn’t even have FM coverage in London let alone a national DAB outlet.

However, it’s important to bear in mind that Radio X’s figures are based on a half yearly average so these figures do include some of XFM’s data. The next quarter’s results will give a truer reflection on Radio X’s performance against XFM.

Looking at the market as a whole, commercial radio now reaches more listeners in a week than the BBC. With a number of new commercial stations coming to air over the next few months and providing greater listener choice, don’t be surprised if this remains the case for the foreseeable future.

It is worth noting that the new stations are more likely to provide competition to existing commercial services than they are to current BBC services.

As these new stations won’t necessarily be reported in the next Rajar, it will not come as a shock if existing commercial stations see a drop in hours and reach on account of people tuning in to these new services. This may lead to commercial radio being slightly under-represented in the next round of figures.

Digital listening hours are pretty flat on the last quarter but up 10% year on year. The likes of Magic, Kiss and Gold all have a majority of their listeners tuning in via digital (it should be noted that not all areas in the UK can pick up these stations via any other means).

With the new multiplex launch later this month, and the recent announcement that DAB radio is now standard in 80% of new cars, these numbers are only going to keep rising for the next few surveys.