Feature: The Importance Of The Breakfast Show
The breakfast show has long been the lynchpin of a station’s schedule, seen as the point at which listeners will either stick with the station for most of the day or wander off down the dial to a competitor’s broadcast. It is not surprising that the breakfast slot is so important as it attracts by far the largest audience of the day. Most stations’ listening graphs will peak around 8:15am with an audience size that will not be matched until the following morning.
The result of these large audiences is a considerable concentration of advertising spend across the breakfast period. MMS figures recently compiled by Admap/CIA show that the 7am to 9am slot took over 20% of commercial radio’s advertising revenue – or £110 million – in the year to August 1999. Chris Tarrant’s programme on Capital 95.8 FM is by far the biggest earner, taking over £14 million across the period, way above its closest rival, Chris Evans on Virgin 1215 AM, which took £6.5 million. Capital Radio’s breakfast programme brings in around half a million listeners between 6 and 10am; Virgin 1215 AM’s breakfast audience is around 315,000 listeners.
Excluding London and national stations, Clyde 1 FM was the most lucrative at breakfast time, taking £2.8 million in the year to August, an annual increase of 24%. In third place in the breakfast revenue table is national station Classic FM. Classic saw its breakfast ad revenue increase by 21% year on year to almost £6 million.
Looking at the all commercial radio average across the breakfast peak period, the audience of 35-54 adults is slightly higher than the 15-34 age bracket. This reverses after around 5:30pm, when the commercial radio audience becomes on average younger as the 35-54s drop below the 15-34s. None of the audiences, however, is higher at any point in the day than the peak at around 8:30 in the morning. Accordingly, radio adspend is greatest between 8 and 9am, with this slot taking around £60 million in the year to August; the 7-8am slot accounted for more than £50 million of radio’s advertising revenue.
Figures from MMS also show that breakfast time ad spend is greatest at the beginning of the week and then tails off into the weekend. In the twelve months to August, Monday and Tuesday took the most breakfast revenue, with Monday at around £7 million and Tuesday slightly less. Friday’s took less than £6 million and Saturday is by far the weakest day for breakfast spend, taking just over £3 million.
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