Can you hear what the stats are singing?

The commercial (non-BBC) radio market has experienced increases in audience figures, according to the RAJAR quarterly report. Although the number of people listening to the radio is up by 608,000, the number of listening hours has fallen by 3%. There are however interesting trends within the market, with digital and commercial listening on the rise.

Figures show that half of radio listening adults now use digital radio but only a third of listening hours is done via this medium. In the latter half of this year we might, however, expect this to rise as Bauer Media launch two new digital stations- KissFresh and Kisstory- which will be available on mobile, desktop, tablet and Freeview.

London’s Capital and Magic 105.4 will be pleased with their results. Capital broadcast to 1.95 million people, overtaking Magic in terms of their reach to weekly listeners; yet Magic retained the highest proportion of listening hours with nearly 6%. Capital can be happy further, with Berry and Snowdon’s breakfast show attracting more than 1 million listeners.

 

Photo courtsey of Capitalfm.com

Heart’s breakfast show audience rose by a massive 120,000 listeners, putting them in second place for morning listening. Magic’s Neil Fox took a close third place, and a year on year rise of 20% for Absolute Radio slides them nicely into fifth place.
Nick Grimshaw’s Radio 1 morning show saw a dramatic decline of nearly 900,000 listeners from Q4 in 2012. This translates to a fall of 14%, and a year on year drop of almost a fifth. To add insult to injury, Vodafone’s Big Top 40 attracted a million more listeners than Radio 1.
       
From an advertiser’s perspective, what does this mean for the market and pricing? Total advertising expenditure on radio (as recorded by AdDynamix) for Q1 2013 is down 3% compared to this time last year. This together with stagnation on total listening has therefore ensured that radio pricing remains competitive. MC&C are not expecting any increases in overall pricing during 2013.

Written by Sean Stanfield, Media Intern