Rajar Q3 2025: Commercial audience share hits all-time high with Heart leading the way

Rajar Q3 2025

Commercial radio’s audience share grew relative to the BBC in Q3 to a record all-time high, according to the latest Rajar figures.

Commercial listening now accounts for 56% of total listening, up from 53.3% in Q3 2024, compared to the BBC’s 41.7%.

Commercial radio now reaches a record of 8.8m more listeners than the BBC, with 39.7m people tuning in each week.

Commercial radio’s average hours per listener have also increased, up to 14.4m from 13.9m  respectively in Q3 2024.

Global’s Heart has retained the top spot among the brands, reaching 12.8m listeners each week — narrowly beating BBC Radio 2 to the top spot.

Global saw a slight year-on-year decline of 0.8% to 27.4m, compared to a 3.2% decrease for Bauer to 21.4m.

Global grew its share of listening to 25.4%, ahead of Bauer’s 19.6%.

Meanwhile, the leading BBC stations in terms of listening share – Radio 2 (13%) and Radio 4 (Including 4 Extra) (10.9%) – both saw their weekly reach decrease marginally year-on-year. This is despite Radio 2 experiencing a quarterly growth of 1.3%, while Radio 4 saw a decline in reach of 4.2% during the same period.

Several Bauer brands saw year-on-year declines in weekly reach, including Hits Radio (-12.2% to 4m), Greatest Hits Radio (-16.2% to 6.2m), KISS (-23% to 1.2m).

However, Global’s Smooth Network also saw a decline in weekly reach (-10.3% to 5.9m), as did its decades stations, Heart 80s (-7% to 1.7m), Heart 90s (-19.8% to 1m) and Heart 70s (-24.4% to 645k).