Rajar Q4 2025
Commercial radio has retained its audience in Q4, according to the latest Rajar figures.
Despite a 1% decline from the last quarter, commercial radio now accounts for 55.2% of total listening, compared to the BBC’s 42.8%.
In real terms, commercial radio now has 8.5m more listeners than the BBC, with 39.4m people tuning in each week.
All radio listening experienced a marginal year-on-year decline, now reaching 50m weekly listeners (50.3m in Q4 2024).
This quarter also saw records in online listening and in audiences tuning in to commercial radio for longer.
Radiocentre’s CEO Matt Payton said: “It’s great to see commercial radio’s share remaining strong again this quarter, with audiences tuning in for longer.
“It’s also encouraging to see record-breaking numbers for online listening, reflecting the fact that listeners are increasingly choosing to access their favourite radio brands across multiple platforms.”
Technology driving listening
The figures demonstrate that technology continues to change the way people listen.
Online listening to all radio reached a record high of 29.8%, ahead of AM/FM at 25.4%. For commercial radio, online listening accounts for 33.1% of listening hours, up from 31.1% in Q4 2024.
This, in part, is driven by smart speaker listening. For all radio, smart speaker listening continues to grow year on year at 18.5% of total listening, up from 16.1% in Q4 2024.
In commercial radio, smart speaker listening remains at 22.2% of all listening, up from 18.8% in Q4 2024 and above AM/FM at 19.7%.
Total digital listening increased its share, partly driven by a slight surge in DAB and DTV listening, growing by 0.8% QoQ.
However, reach for all digital platforms decreased marginally but this is reflective of a slight decrease in all radio listening as a whole, despite digital platforms increasing their share overall.
>>> View the data: Rajar Q4 2025: Online listening records record platform share
Hours up with Heart leading the way
Time spent listening to commercial radio has risen, with average hours at 14.2m up from 13.9m year-on-year.
Global’s Heart has retained the top spot among the brands, reaching 12.71m listeners each week — narrowly beating BBC’s Radio 2.
Global saw a slight year-on-year decline of 1.3% to 27.5m, compared to a 3.9% decrease for Bauer to 21m.
Global grew its share of listening to 25.9%, ahead of Bauer’s 19.3%.
>>> View the data: Rajar Q4 2025: Commercial audience share declines slightly, but Heart still leads the way
Bauer’s KISS station makes a comeback
Bauer’s Kiss Breakfast with Jordan and Perri saw a 12% year-on-year increase and a 20% quarter-on-quarter increase, reaching 523,000 weekly listeners.
This shows a clear bounce-back from Q3 2025, which reported a year-over-year decline in weekly reach to 436,000 listeners. The Media Leader understands this resulted from rebranding Kiss’s local stations to Hits, making Kiss a digital-only brand.
As of 2 February 2025, Tyler West and Chloe Burrows have become the new hosts. It remains to be seen what effect this will have on the station’s reach, so time will tell whether it continues to drive the brand’s reach.
Gary Stein, director of audio at Bauer Media Audio UK, said: “It’s also brilliant to see KISS building real momentum, especially with younger audiences, and this week’s launch of the new KISS Breakfast show with Tyler West and Chloe Burrows marks an exciting next step as we look ahead to a new chapter for the brand.”
>>> View the data: Rajar Q4 2025: Heart Breakfast remains top commercial show after reporting strong growth
The rise of the spin-offs
Notably, some of the big commercial winners year-on-year this quarter in terms of weekly reach among national stations are some of the “spin-off” stations from one of the main brands.
For instance, Global’s Heart Musicals reported a 55% year-on-year growth. Whereas its Classic FM Calm show reported 44% growth, Capital Anthems reported 28% growth, and Smooth Relax reported 25% growth.
Meanwhile, Bauer’s KISS Xtra reported year-on-year growth of 49%, its Mell and Absolute Radio 00s reported 20% growth.
Independent channel CountryLine Radio reported a 48% growth, and GB News Radio reported a 44% increase.
This suggests that while big brands still carry significant weight with the public, listeners are increasingly branching out and perhaps appreciating a wider variety than in previous years.
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