Commercial Radio Increases Its Majority Share

Commercial radio has continued its upward trend in its battle for listeners against the BBC. Its 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%.

Yet on the national scale a decrease was evident with the 10.1% figure recorded down on the 10.9% for the same period last year. Indeed of the national stations only Classic FM enjoyed an improvement from 3.1% to 3.3%. Atlantic 252 and Virgin Radio AM (UK) suffered losses in market share, whilst Talk Radio maintained it’s 1.8%. The general trend as regards to the number of listeners was down as more people chose to keep their wirelesses off.