Q2 RAJAR 1998 – National Stations

The weekly reach of All BBC stations dropped by 0.3% to 26.6 million, whilst All Commercial’s reach increased by 0.5% to 28.6 million.

Radio 1 experienced the greatest year on year fall in weekly reach, down 3.2%; its share of listening dropped by 0.2% points to 9.5%. All the other national BBC stations reported gains in weekly reach, particularly Radio 3, up 10.3%.

Radio 4’s new shedule (see BBC Invests An Extra £2m A Year In Radio 4) is proving fairly successful. Taking quarter on quarter, Radio 4 is the only BBC station to report a an increase in average weekly reach (up 1.1%).

Talk Radio, which has been the subject of a recent takeover over battle between its current management, led by Paul Robinson, and a consortium led by Kelvin MacKenzie (see MacKenzie Closes In On Talk), performed well this quarter. Talk’s weekly reach was up by 19.1%.

Chris Evans’ Virgin AM’s results were also strong – up by 16.2%. Evans’ breakfast show continues to draw listeners away from Zoe Ball and Kevin Greening over on Radio 1 and it was alleged in today’s Daily Star that Ball may be considering a move to Virgin as a result.

Atlantic 252 which, like Talk, is owned by CLT-Ufa and is also up for sale, returned some very bad results for this quarter. Its weekly reach was down by over 14% – a loss of around half a million listeners.