RAJAR Q4 2011: Breakfast

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

National

Radio listeners in the UK continue to favour Chris Evans’ BBC Radio 2 breakfast show, which enjoyed a 1.6% YoY rise in weekly reach in Q4 2011.

His breakfast show remains well ahead of BBC Radio 2’s stablemates Radio 1 and Radio 4 with a total weekly reach of almost 8.9 million listeners.

Chris Moyles and his team at BBC Radio 1 enjoyed a small boost during the fourth quarter, up 1.1%, but the show lost listeners over the year (down -2.8% on Q4 2010).

BBC Radio 4’s Today programme posted positive results both quarterly and yearly – up 5.7% and 7.8% respectively. The show’s total reach now sits just behind BBC Radio 1 with 7.1 million listeners, compared to Moyles’ 7.2 million.

BBC Radio FIVE LIVE took a real hit in the last three months of the year though, down by a significant -20.6% on Q4 2010. The show’s total reach now sits at 2.5 million listeners per week (down -0.4% on Q3).

Classic FM and Kiss UK both enjoyed positive QoQ results – up 5.8% and 1.9% respectively. talkSPORT saw its reach fall during the quarter (down -3.9%) but rise by a substantial 35% on Q4 2010.

However, the Total Absolute Radio Network was the real success story, with its reach up 6.2% QoQ and 43.9% YoY to 1.2 million listeners.

London

In London, 95.8 Capital Radio was still the favourite in Q4 with more than 1.3 million listeners tuning in between 6am and 10am. Lisa Snowdon presented the show with the long-standing Capital DJ Johnny Vaughan until mid-November. In Q4, Capital breakfast’s listening figures jumped 16.3% QoQ and 21.7% YoY before Dave Berry took over the early morning job from Vaughan after Christmas.

Bauer’s Magic 105.4 put in an impressive performance in Q4 to reclaim the number two spot in the capital. The station enjoyed an 18.3% QoQ rise and a 9.1% YoY increase in weekly reach to 848,000.

Bauer’s Kiss also had a bumper month, up 19.7%, which has pushed it in to third place ahead of Global’s Heart 106.2 FM (which was second in the rankings in Q3 2011). The Rickie and Melvin breakfast show now has a weekly reach of 838,000 listeners.

Heart, meanwhile, lost out in Q4, falling -3.4% QoQ to 814,000 listeners. However, the Global-owned station is up 11.8% on Q4 2010.

LBC 97.3 had a good period, with its reach increasing 19.5% QoQ and 6.6% YoY. Total Absolute Radio Network (London) and XFM 104.9 posted very positive YoY figures (up 22.2% and 29.5% respectively), though both station’s were down QoQ.

Choice FM London and Smooth Radio (London) both suffered both quarterly and yearly declines.

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