Nick Grimshaw RAJAR Update

On the quarter (Q2/13), Nick is up 106,000 listeners taking him to 5.9m. On the year, he's down 1.03m

I still think it's early days. Generally you need 18 months to see what's happening, we've had barely half of that.

However, three quarters does give us some information to have a look at.

Let's have a look at his reach across different age groups. Green is Moyles, blue is Grimmy.

Well, we know that he's seen a drop across 15+, and you can see it there.

The little bit of growth he's seeing is 15 to 24s and 35 to 44s. This does make sense - one is the parent of the other.

Other demos are seeing drop-offs as you would expect. I'm surprised how fast the 25 to 34s are dropping. Perhaps it suggests that they do have a truly young breakfast show? Maybe the problem is that 15 to 24s perhaps don't know about it?

Let's look at the hours. This looks at how much time the audience is giving to the show.

I think this shows two problems. One - younger listeners are listening to less radio, their reach is still there, but volume is down. It was down with Moyles and it continues to drop with Grimmy. Two - is the show delivering the content that keeps people connected with the show - and listening longer (or just more regularly across the week).

Having a quick look at Kiss I think the data about whether it's a structual problem with the audience is perhaps inconclusive - but Kiss seem to be delivering  more consistently (and with a stonking quarter). They've also been doing the show for a little while so have built momentum.

So, what should R1 do about Grimmy? I'm a regular listener and have some views, but I think it's always easy to confuse what you think, with what the majority of the audience think. They're rarely the same thing. Also, the show's been evolving and I'm sure they've done their own research.

However, that's not very interesting for a blog post, is it? So, I'm going to pose a few questions that any breakfast team should look at as they develop their proposition.

• What's the one line that describes the show?


• What are objectives? How are you going to deliver them?


• What's the lifestyle of the audience, how do you reflect it?


• Is the music right? How do you know?


• What are your benchmarks? Are they strong enough?


• Is the show's 'cast' delivering? Are they recognisable? Do they have positions or a role? Do these roles


• Are the storylines working? Is it providing talkability? Is there the right mix of short and long?


• What is the rest of the station pointing to on the show?


• Are the guests emphasising your values?


• Are you being consistent?


• Is it tight enough, is it funny enough?


• Are you reviewing the show each day? Spend enough time on what went well. Why did it go well? How could we have made that even better? Shorter? Longer? What should we have thought about?


• What's the marketing plan? If you're happy with the content, how do you tell new people about it?


• Is there a plan to generate sampling?