A wobble this quarter shouldn’t detract from long term trends…

Stacey Pratt, head of radio branded content at MediaCom, says commercial needs to work harder to grow it’s hours on digital-only stations to contend with the BBC’s offering…

While all radio listening fell compared to the same period year on year – it’s no great surprise given this year’s poor weather and major TV viewing spectacles like the Euros and Jubilee.

Nevertheless, this quarter saw a fractional rise for radio (0.2%), with commercial radio closing the gap on the BBC.

The key winners were Absolute – who saw impressive growth across their network, and especially in London – which wasn’t a market that performed well overall. Planet Rock also saw steady growth quarterly and year on year.

It’s clear that national commercial radio has done well (up 1.3% this quarter) whereas BBC decline seemed to come mainly from local stations (down 9.4%)

The likes of Capital network sees its growth continue, compared to the same period in 2011, but it suffered a dip this quarter – and there are a few stations with the same story (eg Smooth and Kiss UK) – showing an overall growth trend despite faltering slightly this RAJAR.

Digital radio in general keeps its steady momentum this quarter – now at 31.5% share – and while DAB continues to dominate, online/app listening increased by 18%. This is down to Radioplayer and mobile apps, which are fuelling people’s discovery of stations as well as accessibility at different times of day.

The top three digital-only stations in terms of share of listening are all BBC-owned (6Music, 4Extra and 1Extra), which proves commercial needs to work harder to grow it’s hours on digital-only stations to contend with the BBC’s offering.