The latest Rajar data for Quarter 1 1994 shows commercial radio further increasing its audience share to 45.1%, this is an increase of 7.7 % points on the same period in 1993 and an increase of 2.3 % points on Quarter 4 1993. Commercial radio now has a weekly reach of 59% (27.3m), compared with 55% a year ago.
Despite this increase for commercial radio, radio listening in general has declined over the past year. The radio audience has fallen by 0.5m to 40.6m and total hours listened has fallen to 842.6m, compared with 867.9m in Quarter 1 1993, a fall of 3%. All radio’s weekly reach has fallen by 2 % points to 89%. This fall in radio listening corresponds to the fall in BBC Radio listening.
Virgin, which celebrates its first birthday on Saturday, recorded its best figures so far with the station’s weekly reach up to 3.2m, compared with 3.0m in Quarter 4 1993. Total hours listened increased from 19m to 23.2m taking Virgin’s share of all radio listening to 2.8%. John Pearson, Virgin’s sales director, said yesterday that the station’s recent promotion and advertising drive was now paying off and that it takes time to build radio audiences.
Classic FM’s share of listening has risen to 3.1%, up from 2.8% a year ago and the station’s weekly audience has risen by 7.8% over the past year to 4.8m. Commenting on the latest results John Pearson, the station’s chief executive, said that the more detailed Quarter 1 data, which is officially released next week, shows that 2.9m of Classic’s listeners fall into the ABC1 group.
BBC Radio has taken a further battering with the latest Rajar figures showing its share of listening falling to 52.3%, compared with 59% a year ago. The BBC’s weekly reach has dipped from 69% to 63%.
The main casualty among the BBC stations has been Radio 1, which has lost almost 3m listeners, it now has a weekly audience of 13.2m compared with 16.1m a year ago. Speaking at yesterday’s release of the data, Radio 1’s controller Matthew Bannister said he expected the station’s situation to stabilise towards the end of 1994. He pointed out that Radio 1’s declining audience is not a recent phenomenon and has been part of a long term trend. In defence of the recent changes he said that a first analysis of the data by time segment has shown that the Steve Wright breakfast programme is gaining listeners at a higher rate than any other radio programme currently broadcasting.
