RAJAR Q3 2009: Breakfast

This analysis is comparing the weekly reach of the breakfast shows of the London stations and not the time slots. Heart 106.2 FM’s breakfast show currently run from 6am-9am, while 95.8 Capital Radio’s runs from 6am-10am and Magic 105.4’s runs from 5.30am-9am.

Johnny Vaughan’s 95.8 Capital Radio breakfast show remains on top in London once again with a weekly reach of more than one million listeners, despite a 10.6% period on period decline, according to RAJAR’s Q3 2009 report.

The station’s breakfast show sits well ahead of its rival London shows, although Heart 106.2FM is gathering pace after an impressive 6.3% year on year increase, which has taken its reach up to 816,000 listeners.  However, Heart’s show dipped by a small 0.2% period on period.

Magic 105.4’s breakfast show, meanwhile, slipped down to third place after a 9.1% period on period fall, despite being up 5.7% over the year.  It’s total reach now sits at 780,000 listeners.

Kiss 100FM also suffered a drop in its weekly reach in Q3, down by 22.6% period on period, despite a 5% year on year rise.  The Rickie & Melvin breakfast show had hit a high of almost 790,000 listeners in Q2 2009 but is down to 611,000 listeners now.

A number of other stations also witnessed fairly substantial period on period percentage falls.  BBC London 94.9 dropped by almost 29%, while Gold London was down by nearly 15% during the quarter.

However, some stations enjoyed a more positive period.  Choice FM London saw a period on period rise of 27.8%, which takes its reach up to 285,000.  LBC News 1152’s reach, meanwhile, was up to 184,000 after a significant 42.6% period on period increase.

LBC 97.3 also did well this quarter, increasing its reach by 9.7% period on period – and by 42.5% year on year – to 553,000 listeners, which puts it in fifth place after Kiss.  Since its buy-out of GCap, almost a year ago, Global Radio now owns three out of the five top performing breakfast shows in London.

Nationally, BBC Radio 2 remained top at breakfast, despite a 2.2% period on period decline.  Terry Wogan, who is soon to depart from the breakfast show to make way for fellow Radio 2 DJ Chris Evans, now has a weekly reach of around 7.7 million.  (Figures for Chris Evan’s new Radio 2 breakfast show will be available in May 2010).

Chris Moyles and his team on BBC Radio 1, meanwhile, lost their increasingly small gap on Radio 2 following a 8.8% period on period drop.  The station’s breakfast show was less than 200,000 listeners away from its Radio 2 rival in Q2, however, its total reach now sits at 7 million – a fair way behind Wogan.

BBC Radio 4 remains in third place after a period on period rise of 1.5% (8.1% year on year) taking it up to 6.6 million listeners in total.

BBC Radio 3 is the only other station in our analysis to report both period on period and year on year increases.  Although it just rose by 0.7% during the quarter, it was up by a considerable 19.6% year on year.  Its total weekly reach now stands at 816,000 listeners.

talkSPORT did manage to record a period on period upturn of 6.3% but was down by 6.6% year on year, leaving its total reach at around one million listeners.

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