GfK Claims Breakfast Shows Flop With Festive Audiences
The number of listeners tuning into radio breakfast shows dropped significantly over Christmas and New Year, according to the first-ever audience figures to be published for the festive period.
The data from GfK’s unofficial National Broadcast Survey could have significant implications for media planners by showing that radio listening between 6:00am and 10:00am during the two week Christmas holiday was just a fraction of the normal weekday average.
According to the research, breakfast audiences usually peak at 8:00am with the average for the top of the hour reaching more than 3.6 million listeners. However, early morning listening between 20 December and 4 January was almost half that number at 2 million, rising to a peak of 3.2 million at 10:00am.
The electronic measurement survey shows that Christmas listening in the eight-hour period from 6:00am to 2:00pm replicated weekend listening patterns. Radio audiences were larger than average in the late morning 10:00am to midday slot, suggesting that more people seized the opportunity stay in bed.
Commenting on the figures, Nick North director of GfK Media, said: “These findings are really significant and prove that people’s listening habits replicate weekend listening over the entire two-week Christmas period. This has massive ramifications for media planners and programme schedulers who have the facts at their disposal for the first time ever.”
The research shows that all radio saw its daily reach fall by 24% on Christmas day. BBC Radio Four proved to be the most popular festive station, with more than 5.5 million people tuning in on 25 December for the Bishop of Durham’s special Christmas sermon.
Radio Four’s closest rivals were BBC Radio Two with 4.1 million listeners and BBC Radio One with an audience of 2.8 million. Around 1.5 million people tuned into Classic FM on Christmas Day and Kelvin MacKenzie’s talkSPORT attracted 817,000 festive listeners.
The GfK figures represent the first time that audience data for the festive period has been published. The research company claims that RAJAR does not report listening for two weeks over Christmas because it uses a diary system that would be “impossible” to implement during that time (see GfK To Measure Radio Audiences Over Christmas Period).
The Wireless Group recently welcomed news that Transport For London is to become the first major radio advertiser to use the GfK’s wristwatch audience measurement system to plan a campaign. The public sector transport group will test GfK’s fledgling Broadcast Media Survey against officially sanctioned RAJAR data for planning an extensive road safety campaign on London radio (see Major Radio Advertiser To Test GfK Survey Against RAJAR).
GfK: 0870 603 8339 www.gfk.com
Recent Radio Stories from NewsLine Ofcom Plans To Roll Out Raft Of New Radio Licences GWR Group Sees 12% Revenue Rise In Q1 Digital Radio Sales Surge To Record Levels
Subscribers can access ten years of NewsLine articles by clicking the Search button to the left