Rajar Q4 2025: Commercial audience share declines slightly

Rajar Q4 2025 

Commercial radio’s audience share has declined 1% from the last quarter and now accounts for 55.2% of total listening, compared with the BBC’s 42.8%.

This marks an increase from 53.9% in Q4 2024, with commercial radio now reaching 8.5m more listeners than the BBC, with a weekly reach of 39.4m.

Time spent listening to commercial radio has risen, with average hours at 14.2m up from 13.9m year-on-year.

Global’s Heart has retained the top spot among the brands, reaching 12.71m listeners each week — narrowly beating BBC’s Radio 2.

Global saw a slight year-on-year decline of 1.3% to 27.5m, compared to a 3.9% decrease for Bauer to 21m.

Global grew its share of listening to 25.9%, ahead of Bauer’s 19.3%.

Meanwhile, the leading BBC stations in terms of listening share – Radio 2 (13.8%) and Radio 4 (Including 4 Extra) (11.4%) – both saw weekly reach decreases year-on-year, by -6.9% and -1.0% respectively.