Feature: Radio Groups Show Improvements In Latest RAJAR Report

UK radio listening is performing strongly according to the RAJAR audience figures for the first quarter of this year, with the whole industry adding more than 33,000 hours’ listening quarter on quarter. Commercial radio’s share of listening has increased, on a national and local level, helping the commercial sector to close the gap slightly between itself and the BBC. At the same time All BBC’s share slipped back 0.3% points to 51%.

Only three of the largest radio operators – Capital Radio, EMAP Radio and GWR Group – currently report a group-wide RAJAR figure. The Capital Radio group saw its overall average weekly audience fall by 86,000 listeners quarter on quarter, with the flagship Capital 95.8 in London dropping 10% of its listeners to take an average audience of 2.7 million a week. Meanwhile, London-based alternative station Xfm, bought by Capital in June 1998, is doing well – its weekly audience increased by 9.7% to 420,000 quarter on quarter.

An analysis of the number of stations improving and declining within each operator shows that Capital Radio was the only group to report falling reach in more than half of its stations (53.3%) for this RAJAR period. For EMAP almost three quarters of stations showed improving weekly reach and at GWR 24 of its 38 reporting stations (63.2%) turned in rising audiences.

EMAP’s North West and Yorkshire divisions look healthy with weekly reach growth of 4.9% and 5.9% respectively; however, the share of listening in each of these areas dropped slightly quarter on quarter. The EMAP Magic brand is currently building audience, with network reach up 5.2% to 2.6 million, although share is also down slightly. This means that more people are tuning in to these stations than in the previous quarter but the hours’ listening, compared to all radio listening in the area, is slightly less. Accordingly, average hours per head across the Magic network fell from 9.9 to 9.2.

Over at Kelvin MacKenzie’s recently-constructed Wireless Group empire, the picture is looking pretty rosy with 75% of stations turning in growing audiences. The rebranded Big AM stations are looking promising with the Stockport-based licensee seeing its audience increase from 52,000 to 89,000 in just three months.

Whilst they are obviously much smaller groups, Chrysalis and Border Radio nevertheless enjoyed seeing every one of their stations report increasing audiences in this survey. Chrysalis’ Galaxy network, which operates across the North, increased its reach by 8.3% to 2.3 million. Border’s three Century stations saw reach rise by 8.1% to 1.5 million. Border is in the process of being acquired by Capital Radio, a merger which will create the UK’s largest UK operator.