Industry view: Agencies praise “fantastic” commercial radio results
RAJAR’s Q3 2010 figures show another strong performance from commercial radio in what was an all-round positive release for the radio industry.
But what do the figures really mean? Will a nationwide Capital brand do as well as the Heart Network? Is the target of 50% of digital listening by 2015 still achievable? Can commercial continue to gain ground on the BBC’s majority share?
Radio experts gave us their views…
This has been a great set of results for commercial radio, it’s encouraging to see the commercial sector making inroads into the BBC’s share of listening. It’s also good to see for the second consecutive period an increase in reach, making this a record reach for commercial radio.
Although digital radio has seen growth year on year, it’s disappointing not to have seen an increase quarter on quarter. This begins to make the target of 50% of digital listening, which is required for analogue switch-off in 2015, unachievable. However, it will be interesting to see the results for the next quarter, they will include the new services on digital (e.g. Absolute 90’s and Smooth national) so I would expect to see growth.
talkSPORT programmers will be particularly pleased – the station has definitely benefited from the World Cup and the challenge for their programmers is now to retain the audience.
This RAJAR release shows another really good period for commercial radio and is good for radio in general, with the BBC also posting increases.
The Heart Network keeps going from strength to strength, showing that good quality programming always wins. Heart is a good solid product and people buy in to that. What is the difference to a local listener if they’re getting quality programming? There is no reason why Capital won’t follow too, although the Capital name is a concern when it comes to a national audience.
In London, Capital is the big story – not who is number one. talkSPORT also did very well on the back of the World Cup and digital continues to post good figures.
This release is all about the continued success of radio – normally a bad release follows a good release to balance it out but with two good periods running consecutively, a trend is starting.
This RAJAR was a great result for commercial radio with the sector gaining ground again on BBC Radio, and all the major groups seeing increases in listening.
At Absolute Radio, our overall network listening is now higher than at any time in the last four and a half years with 18.2 million hours, and the London network figure is the highest in nine years. Absolute 80s had a great result reaching 564,000 listeners with 3.7m listening hours – that means that in two RAJARs, it’s already bigger than stations such as the BBC Asian Network.
The London market remains as fluid as ever, and Bauer will no doubt be very pleased with Magic’s performance. Nationally, talkSPORT and Planet Rock will both be very satisfied with their respective record reach figures.
There was good commercial news at breakfast too with both Chris Moyles and Chris Evans losing listeners, while commercial breakfasts shows like Christian O’Connell (up 16%), Nick Ferrari on LBC (up 9%) and Johnny and Lisa on Capital (up 3%) gained listeners, proving that the sector can compete strongly.
It’s good to see that listening to the radio via a mobile phone continues to increase, being particularly strong among 15-24s. So it’s very timely that Nokia has just announced a DAB radio accessory for its new range of mobile phones. This continues to be an important growth area for the medium.
This quarter’s RAJAR shows another fantastic set of results for commercial radio with an increase of 500,000 listeners vs the BBC’s decrease of 342,000. talkSPORT have got the biggest news, with a reach of almost 3 million listeners per week. This shows that talkSPORT’s continual investment in rights to the major sporting events including the football premiership is definitely working for them and is great competition for the BBC.
Both the main ILR networks of Big City and Heart have shown increases in their audience. Bauer have had further success with their brands, including total Kiss and total Magic, both growing their audience by circa 7% and the total Bauer portfolio showing an increase of 2.5%. Global’s strategy with Heart continues to be a huge success, their investment in networked programming and talent including Toby Anstis and Emma Bunton is clearly working.
Capital has also had a great RAJAR, now reaching an audience of 2.1 million in London. The soon to be new Capital network including Galaxy stations, Leicester Sound, Ram,Trent and Red Dragon have all shown increases in reach quarter on quarter , this shows that the new seeding of programming is working and Global could be telling another success story this time next year.