Commercial Radio Success Continues

Commercial radio has continued it’s upward trend in it’s battle for listeners against the BBC. It’s share for the second quarter of 1997 shows that the majority of listeners chose commercial stations. The 50.2% slice of the market improved year-on-year from 49.3%. Meanwhile the BBC went from being marginally behind in 1996 with 48.6%, to having to cope with a more significant deficit on just 47.4%.

Despite this, all but one of the BBC’s national stations and local BBC stations showed an increase in listeners, with Radio 2 recording the best of the rises. The main sufferer was Radio 1 which plummeted from a 12.8% share to only 9.7%.

Interestingly, commercial radio won it’s listeners on local battlefields, whilst on a national level actually returned a loss in market share.