RAJAR Q4 2012: National stations

Reach

BBC Radio 2 and BBC 6 Music have both seen their highest audience reach figures ever according to the latest Q4 results from RAJAR (Radio Joint Audience Research).

BBC Radio 2 has seen an 8.7% increase, quarter-on-quarter, and a 5.9% increase year-on-year to see it end 2012 with 15.1 million weekly listeners.

BBC 6 Music, meanwhile, saw it increase its year-on-year growth by 31% (16% quarter-on-quarter) to hit an all-time high of 1.89 million weekly listeners.

Total Global Radio (UK) continues to head up the nationals and networks. The network has a weekly reach of 19.25 million listeners, which is down very slightly -0.8% compared to last year and -0.3% compared to the previous period.

Total Absolute Radio also saw good gains, increasing its year-on-year reach by 10.8%.

The largest year-on-year decline for reach was recorded by Bauer’s Q with -30.7%, but the station did end the year increasing its reach by 21% on Q3.

Average Hours

BBC Radio 4 (including 4 Extra) claimed the top spot for average hours per listener (12.7 hours), an increase of 2.4% on the previous quarter and up 1.6% year-on-year. Radio 4 alone took second place with similar figures.

BBC Radio 2 came third with a quarter-on-quarter increase of 5.2% and a year-on-year increase of 2.5% to match BBC Radio 4’s 12.1 hours per listener each week.

Absolute Radio 00s saw the second largest percentage increase for year-on-year change (38.5%) and a huge 54.3% increase on the previous quarter to claim 5.4 hours per listener each week, on average.

Jazz FM also saw good year-on-year growth, with 32.4% and 4.9 hours.

The largest year-on-year decline was recorded by Total Choice (UK) at -16.4%, but this was up 2.2% on the previous quarter (4.6 hours).

Share

In terms of share of listening, BBC Radio 2 has nabbed the top spot from Total Global Radio (UK) after a 2 percentage point increase, quarter-on-quarter, to secure 17.6% of the market.

Total Global Radio (UK) saw no change on the last quarter and only a 0.6 percentage point change on last year, ending 2012 with 15.7%.

The biggest year-on-year loss, still only a -1.1 percentage point change, was recorded by BBC Radio 1 who end 2012 with 7.4% of the share.

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