RAJAR Q2 2011: Breakfast

This analysis is comparing the weekly reach of the breakfast shows of the London stations and not the time slots.

Radio listeners across the UK still like to wake up to Chris Evans on BBC Radio 2, though his breakfast programme’s reach has slipped in the last quarter, down -5.6%.

Its total weekly reach has fallen from 9.2 million in Q1 2011 to 8.7 million listeners but it is still a fair way ahead of Chris Moyles and his team. BBC Radio 1 also saw a drop in listeners – down -1.1% QoQ and -3.6% YoY to 7.4 million.

BBC Radio 4 enjoyed another good period – up 2.2% QoQ and 3% YoY – allowing it to close the gap on Radio 1. The Today Programme now has a total reach of 7.2 million.

However, the real success story was Total Absolute Radio Network, which enjoyed a significant 27.7% QoQ and 44.2% YoY increase. The station’s breakfast show now has a total reach of more than 1.3 million.

talkSPORT put in another impressive performance, up 18.8% YoY to 1.36 million listeners, while BBC Radio FIVE LIVE recorded both quarterly and yearly increases.

In London, Johnny and Lisa remain favourites with more than 1.1 million listeners, despite being down on Q1’s reach (-6.8%). However, the Capital London breakfast show is up 2.1% on this time last year.

Magic 105.4 has jumped back in to second place following a small 0.7% increase in reach and Heart’s loss. After rising to the second spot in last quarter’s RAJAR release, Heart 106.2 FM recorded a -7.9% QoQ and -14.4% YoY decline in Q2.

In fourth place, the Rickie and Melvin breakfast show enjoyed a 3.7% QoQ jump, although Kiss 100FM still has some ground to make up on last year (the programme is down -12.6% on Q2 2010).

Other success stories in the London market include XFM, Sunrise Radio (Greater London), Choice FM London (which has added an hour), Gold London and Premier Christian Radio.

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