RAJAR Q4 2009: BBC & Commercial

The latest RAJAR figures, for Q4 2009, show that overall, more people are listening to commercial radio but they are listening for significantly less time.

All Commercial radio enjoyed a slight year on year rise in weekly reach and was also up year on year in terms of share of listening.

Taking a look at average hours per listener figures, both All BBC and All Commercial saw year on year declines.

Share of Listening

All Commercial’s share of listening was up 0.4 percentage points year on year in the fourth quarter, hitting 42.6%. It was also up period on period, by 0.2 percentage points.

While within this All National Commercial recorded a slight decline of 0.2 percentage points year on year, to 10.4%, All Local Commercial (National TSA) was up 0.6 percentage points, taking its share of listening to 32.2%.

Down 0.5 percentage points on Q4 2008, All BBC’s total share of listening now stands at 55.2%. It did manage to increase its share on Q3 2009 though, with a 0.2 percentage point rise. All BBC Network Radio’s share was boosted 0.3 percentage points year on year, to 46.7%, while BBC Local/Regional fell 0.8 percentage points over the same period to rest at 8.5%.

Weekly Reach

The RAJAR figures reveal that All Commercial radio now reaches just under 31.4 million listeners a week, up 0.5% on Q4 2008. There was, however, a 4.7% year on year fall for All National Commercial, leaving its weekly reach at 13 million listeners.

Following growth of 0.8% year on year, All Local Commercial (National TSA) now has 25.3 million listeners a week on average.

The winter months proved slightly harder for All BBC, with a year on year dip of 0.8% taking its weekly reach to under 33.3 million listeners. There was better news for All BBC Network Radio, up 0.3% to 30 million, while BBC Local/Regional lost 6.4% of its listeners year on year, leaving it with a total of under 8.9 million. Despite this relatively large decline on last year, BBC Local/Regional was up by around 4% on Q3 2009.

Other listening was down on Q4 2008, by 4.5% to three million.

Average Hours Per Listener

The average number of hours each listener spent listening to radio was down for both All BBC and All Commercial in the fourth quarter.

All BBC’s average hours per listener figure was down 2.4% year on year to 16.4 hours, while a similar dip – of 2.2% – saw All Commercial’s total fall to 13.4 hours.

At 7.9 hours on average, listeners are sticking with All National Commercial radio for the same amount of time as they did in the final quarter of 2008, but there was a fall for All Local Commercial (National TSA), down 0.8% to 12.6 hours.

Listeners now stick with All BBC Network Radio for an average of 15.4 hours after a 1.9% year on year decline, while a 4% drop-off for BBC Local/Regional has listeners tuning in for 9.5 hours.

MediaTel has PowerPoint presentations available to download, featuring pre-prepared market breakdown graphs for the latest RAJAR data release – click here.