Breakfast Success For Moyles Fails To Boost Radio One
Radio One breakfast show host Chris Moyles helped to increase the station’s breakfast audience by 17% in the first quarter of this year, according to the latest unofficial listening figures from GfK.
The National Broadcast Survey, which electronically measures radio and television audiences, shows the loud-mouth DJ saw audiences increase by almost half a million in the first quarter of this year to 2.6 million.
However, the success of the Moyles and his breakfast team did little to help the overall performance of Radio One, which saw its weekly reach decline from 11.8 million to 11.4 million during the same period.
The station has seen its grip on the youth market loosen over the last few months in the face of increasing competition from commercial rivals. Chris Moyles took over from Sara Cox in the much coveted breakfast slot earlier this year, but this has so far done little to boost listening (see BBC Radio 1 Drops Sara Cox From Breakfast Show).
The latest audience figures from GfK show that BBC Radio Four has maintained its position as the UK’s most popular radio station, with a weekly reach of just over 17 million. This places it well ahead of Radio Two, which attracts around 15 million each week.
Kelvin MacKenzie’s talkSPORT is the UK most listened to commercial station, with 6.3 million listeners under the hotly contended electronic measurement system. Classic FM has just over 5.2 million listeners and Virgin has a weekly reach of around 3.3 million.
In the highly competitive London, results for the six months to March 2004 show that the overall picture is stable, with Chris Tarrant leaving Capital 95.8 FM firmly ahead of its closest rival Heart 106.2.
However, the volatile nature of the market means this could all change and Johnny Vaughan has got his work cut out to hold on to Tarrant’s audiences. Capital recently unveiled a £1.8 million advertising campaign to raise awareness of the new breakfast show and Chrysalis-owned Heart followed suit with a campaign promoting the rival Jono and Harriet slot (see Capital Pushes Vaughan With TV Ad Campaign).
GfK: 0870 603 8339 www.gfk.com
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