Rajar Q1 2016: Industry reaction

There were no huge surprises in this quarter’s Rajar results, as we continue to see the inevitable growth of digital listening at the expense of analogue platforms.

Over half of all radio listening now takes place on a digital platform and with the number of cars being fitted with digital radios continuing to grow, this pattern shows no sign of slowing down.

We expect to see a further shift towards digital once the new national DAB multiplex stations are included in the results, as audiences are exposed to more opportunities to tailor their listening to their preferences and behaviours. As this rolls out advertisers should take the opportunity to tailor their media planning and creative to listener behaviour.

The BBC will be pleased to have seen their share of listening grow vs the previous quarter, but the year on year picture is not looking quite as rosy, with the long-term trend showing a gradual shift towards commercial.

However, the swing is still marginal and certainly not drastic enough at this stage to suggest that the BBC is in long-term decline – as has been suggested by some doom-mongers in the light of continued debate into the role and future of the BBC.

The big loser this quarter is Classic FM, which has seen both QoQ (7.2%) and YoY (7.3%) drops in reach as well as declines in share and average hours, meaning it now sits behind Kiss Network in the national arena.

In the breakfast battleground, Classic FM’s show also performed poorly, with a double digit drop in reach of 16.7% on last quarter. Global Radio will be hoping that its revamped weekend line-up which came into effect on Classic FM at the start of April will lead to a turnaround of fortunes in the next set of results.

Looking forward to the rest of the year, it will be interesting to see how the newly relaunched Virgin Radio fares. Of particular interest will be whether this has any impact on listening figures for its no-doubt keen rival, Absolute Radio, which will be feeling confident off the back of its recent Arqiva Breakfast Show of the Year award.

Overall, this is another set of good results for the radio industry, with reach and hours for radio as a whole remaining stable in the face of increasing demands on consumers’ time.

One of the main focuses for this Rajar was always going to be the first full set of results for Radio X (the station reports based on half yearly figures so the last set included crossover with XFM).

While the local FM figures in Manchester and London aren’t great, the move to national DAB means that the station reaches 1.2m a week compared to XFM’s figure of 885k this time last year and with listening hours up 92%, this opens up much more potential advertising inventory for Global against an audience that it had never been particularly strong against.

Capital has seen strong results with the London breakfast show growing by 84k listeners since the last quarter despite losing Lisa Snowden. Global’s most recent acquisition, Capital Liverpool, has seen a 7% increase in reach since the last quarter.

Listeners aren’t always initially welcoming to rebrands so these figures are encouraging, although, like Radio X last quarter, these are not fully representative of the station’s rebranding from Juice 107.6 with a clearer picture available next quarter.

Bauer will be pleased with having the Number 1 and 2 national commercial breakfast shows thanks to Rickie, Melvin and Charlie on Kiss and Christian O’Connell on Absolute. O’Connell’s year on year reach increase of 25% was particularly impressive following the push of Radio X and Moyles who could probably be considered his closest competitor.

The next set of Rajar results promise to be the most interesting set for quite some time where we’ll see the effect of 16 new digital stations being introduced to the market. Whether or not they’ll have moved the dial enough to cross digital listening over the 50% mark from its record 44.1% level remains to be seen…