RAJAR Q1 2013: Round-up

RAJAR today announced that 90% of the UK adult (15+) population – 47.3 million people – tuned in to their selected radio stations in the first quarter of 2013, up by approximately 608,000 on Q1 2012, though the total number of hours listened to radio (1.03 billion) was down marginally, -3% year on year.

Here is our round-up of the results for the national stations and networks and the Digital, London and Breakfast markets.

National stations and networks

Total Global Radio and BBC Radio 2 remain at the top of the national stations and networks when it comes to weekly audience reach, according to the latest RAJAR findings for the first quarter of 2013 – with BBC Radio 2 as the top national station, seeing a 4.9% year on year increase and reaching over 15 million listeners.

BBC Radio 3, Radio 4 and 6 Music were all up year on year (YoY) – 13.7%, 4.4% and 24.7%, respectively – while BBC Radio 1 saw a significant -7.9% YoY drop (-7.5% across the quarter), though it still sat comfortably in the top ten stations with a total weekly reach of approximately 10.2 million.

Absolute Radio 00s saw a massive 102.4% increase YoY, now at 170,000 listeners, compared with 84,000 at the end of Q1 2012.

Global Radio’s popular networks Heart Network and Capital Network were both down YoY, -3.4% and -1.6%, respectively, however Capital Network saw a slight quarter on quarter (QoQ) increase in reach of 1.4%, taking its weekly reach to just under seven million.

Click here to see a in-depth look at the nationals and networks.

Digital

Listening to radio via a digital platform, in terms of weekly reach, has increased by 11% year on year.

26 million people now tune in to radio via a digitally enabled receiver each week, up by almost three million over the year.

Adult ownership of DAB sets at home experienced a steady quarter on quarter increase of 2%, now at 44.3% in the UK (23 million adults). This has risen by almost 10% since 2010.

Digital listening hours for Q1 2013 increased from 311 million hours in Q1 2012 to a total of 355 million hours in Q1 2013 – a healthy 14% increase.

Click here for an in-depth look at digital.

London

Despite a year on year decline of -14.1%, Capital London leads the weekly reach chart with 1.9 million listeners. In second place is rival Magic 105.4 – who nabbed last quarter’s pole position – down 8.4% this quarter netting over 1.8 million listeners each week.

Slipping down one place into fourth is Kiss 100 FM, down 17.2% YoY and -10.7 QoQ to reach just over 1.62 million weekly listeners.

However, it is Global Radio’s XFM London that has seen the strongest YoY growth, up 40.3% YoY and up 29% over the last quarter to reach 574,000 weekly listeners with stable-mate Gold London showing big increases too.

One of the biggest losses, however, was at Smooth Radio London – down -31% YoY and 16.3% QoQ to net 430,000 listeners.

Overall, 12 out of the top 17 London stations in the RAJAR analysis recorded a decline in weekly reach year on year, whilst 11 recorded declines compared to the previous quarter.

Meanwhile, there was little change for the share of listening comparisons at most stations with the largest decline at Kiss 100 FM, down just -1.2 percentage points YoY.

Many stations recorded no change in their share of listening at all and the highest change was 0.7 percentage points, YoY, for Absolute Radio London.

For total listening hours, LBC 97.3 recorded the longest time per listener at 10.5 hours, up 2.9% QoQ. Gold London took second place – up a healthy 32% on the last quarter to net 9.9 hours per listener.

Breakfast

National

BBC Radio 1’s Breakfast Show, hosted by Nick Grimshaw, has dropped in listeners significantly since the departure of the often controversial host Chris Moyles in September last year. The show was down -18.6% YoY and -13.6% quarter on quarter – a loss of almost 1.5 million listeners over the year and 907,000 over the last quarter alone.

However, Chris Evans’ BBC Radio 2 slot and BBC Radio FIVE LIVE were both up QoQ – 2.9% and 1.2%, respectively – with Radio 2 boasting the biggest number of listeners in the first quarter of 2013 at just under ten million.

BBC Radio 3 saw a respectable 16.2% rise in listeners over the quarter – also celebrating the biggest growth of all the national breakfast shows over the year, up 22.2% to 704,000 listeners.

Total Absolute Radio Network grew by 1.7% over the quarter, however the station saw a much more significant YoY growth, up 14.5% to 1.4 million.

Global’s Classic FM and Bauer’s Kiss UK both suffered small QoQ losses – down -1.4% and -2.4%, respectively.

London

Global continues to lead the London breakfast show slots with Capital London remaining at the top of the charts with just over one million listeners, despite seeing a -15.7% YoY and -1.7% QoQ decline.

Heart London followed, up 19.4% over the quarter with 768,000 unique listeners tuning in.

Global’s XFM London saw the biggest percentage increase across the London stations, up 50.9% YoY, bringing it to a total of 261,000 listeners.

Smooth Radio listeners are continuing to tune out, with the breakfast show down -26.6 YoY and -40.2% QoQ – one of the largest percentage decreases across the London stations.

MediaTel has PowerPoint presentations available to download for subscribers, featuring pre-prepared market breakdown graphs for the latest RAJAR data release – click here.

London Breakfast