Thoughts on RAJAR Q4/2013
Well, what have we learned from RAJAR? Not a lot, as everyone's been trying to finish their Radio Academy Award entries.
So, after a quick glance...
Radio 2
Jesus, Radio 2, give it a rest. Let some of your listeners listen to something else!
It's another increase for Radio 2 , they're now at 15.5m listeners and 181m hours, that's a 17.6% share of all radio listening. It's an amazing result, driven by great talent, especially at breakfast, a clever 'station we all agree on' music policy and targeted specialist programming that's out of the way. There's also the bonus of no ads and a £47.8m content budget! Yes really!
6Music
Whilst we're at Western House, its sister station 6music had a great book too (maybe it's in the water?). 1.96m reach and 17.6m hours. It's a whisker below Radio 3's 1.99m, but way ahead on hours. R3 manages just 11.1m. That's the odd thing about Radio 3, its average hours are quite poor - just 5.6. You would expect a specialist station like this to have much higher average hours - only 1Xtra has lower average hours if you look at the BBC's national stations.
Commercial Radio in London
London is a competitive place to be. Market leader is now Capital with a 5% share. They're also number one for reach with 2.1m listeners. Also with a 5% share (but with just 50k less hours) is LBC. Back to average hours - LBC is nearly the market leader and whilst it has the same share, it has half the reach of Capital. But boy do its listeners give it their time - 10.6 average hours. Capital has stuck stubbornly for the last year around this disappointing 4.7 mark - its share would be much higher if they made people listen longer. Kiss, Magic and Heart all do better than Capital on average hours.
A dismal performance for Heart London, a 3.7 share and reach lowest for a long time, at least the last 5 years with just 1.55m listeners.
(Paul Easton later tells me it's the lowest since Q4/2000)
Heart's not doing that much better across the UK either. Heart's ILR network is now reaching 6.4m people with 44m hours - its lowest ever figures. To put that in perspective. Chris Evans, on his own on Radio 2 does 36.2m hours.
Not a great result for CapitalXtra this quarter (which I think was half Choice and half Xtra?) 470k reach is below where they've been for the last few years. But still early days for this new brand.
Another disappointing one for XFM who's audience does seem to bounce around a bit - London reach now 440k.
Smooth did OK (but still a low base) reach static, now 442 vs 441 last quarter. Hours back up a bit to 2.2m. Nothing to write home about.
Collectively however, this means the lowest total hours for Global in London ever.
Manchester
Slightly odd results in Manchester for both Key 103 and XFM. Key's reach skyrocketed from 395k to 570k, with hours nearly doubling whilst XFM saw its reach drop back to its average over the past few quarters - around 180k, but its hours nearly halved.
I imagine this is a bit of a hiccup for both stations and will be corrected next quarter. However, it's probably the first time when a wife (Kate Cocker, PD of Key) has nicked a load of hours from a husband (Tim Cocker, Breakfast XFM). Both are brilliant radio people, but I wouldn't want to be round their kitchen table this morning.
Digital Radio
Digital Radio continues its march. 57% of the UK now listen to some form of digital radio each week (36.8% of the UK listen with DAB, 17.1% through their telly and 16.8% through the internet).
Digital hours now account for 36% of all radio listening (of that 65% is DAB).
Grimmy
It looks like Grimmy's last book was a bit of an anomaly (5.5m reach) and he's returned to a more healthy position - 6.29m listeners. It's still down year on year, but it's his highest reach figure for the past 12 months. His 15 to 24s are still lower than Moyles though and this quarter he's added more 25 to 34s than any other demo.
If we compare Moyles in Q4/11 with Grimmy in Q4/2013, Radio 1 are able to say that Grimmy's making the breakfast show younger. Just. Moyles 15 to 24s made up 29.4% of his audience, it's 30.9% for Grimmy.
Moyles average age in Q4/11 - 33.6, Grimmy this quarter - 33. It isn't particularly a Nick thing - all the shows follow a similar pattern (and similar age). Radio 1 as a whole in Q4/11 - 34.2, today? 33.7.
Admin
If you didn't know, I tweet and tumbl(?) interesting links and things over at links.mattdeegan.com (if you like Tumblr) or twitter.com/mattslinks (on the Twitter). Recent ones are on the left hand side of this page.
You can also subscribe to receive the latest mattdeegan.com blog posts by popping your email address in the box on the left too.
Other RAJAR blog posts