Radio Up-side And Down

Michael Hedges March 11, 2011 Follow on Twitter

Conventional thought among most broadcasters holds that stable ratings are better, lest the ad buyers be frightened. Changing a few things about the survey, though, keeps the ad buyers guessing. We wouldn’t want them to get bored. And boring it was not!

Changes in data reporting by German joint industry measurement institute Media-Analyse (MA) may have contributed to headaches among some broadcasters. Effective with the recently released MA 2011 Radio I survey Monday through Friday and Saturday-Sunday figures replace Monday through Saturday numbers. For the benefit of analysts in need of some sort of trend, MA provided downwardly compatible data from the previous MA 2010 Radio II survey, meaning comparisons with a like survey period are not possible. The MA made more significant sampling changes two years ago, adding pre-teens and foreigners previously excluded.

Topping the charts in the customary listener per hour category was, as usual, Radio NRW, though it lost a smidge. Unique in Germany, Radio NRW is the umbrella for 45 local radio stations in Nordrhein-Westfalan, the most populous German Länder. Some German radio purists consider Radio NRW a network, not a radio channel, and therefore not worthy of that number one position, which it’s held for years.

Change, though, couldn’t be more evident than in Bavarian where two mainstay channels dropped significant listeners and another gained. Public broadcaster Bayerische Rundfunk (BR) channel Bayern 1 ranked number two in the current survey, same as last. But the oldies music channel lost 9.0% of its hourly listener traffic to 1.182 million folks.  Most bruised, arguably, was Antenne Bayern. In absolute terms, it lost 152,000 listeners compared with the previous survey, the most of any station. “It is clear, the air in Bavaria is thinner,” said station program manager Valerie Weber in a post-release statement. Antenne Bayern is now ranked fourth, down one position.

Pop music channel BR Bayern 3, on the other hand, gained 7.0% against the previous survey period and moved up one rank to eighth. News and culture channel BR Bayern 2 gained 26.8%, one of the country’s top performers. BR-Klassik and all-news BR B5 aktuell also gained.

Another pop music public radio channel, SWR3 from Südwestrundfunk (SWR), was the only top five channel to gain listeners. It moved into 3rd place in gross listeners, gaining 3.7%. SWR serves the Baden-Württemberg and Rhineland-Palatinate Länder in southern Germany. Two other SWR channels lost listeners.

Private station RPR1, serving Rheinland-Pfalz with adult contemporary music, was another loser, dropping 20.1% though that may have been due as much to frequency shuffling.  Serving the same area and owned by the same company, bigFM gained 3.1%.

Hit-Radio Antenne 1, serving Baden-Württemberg, had the greatest absolute gain in listeners, up 19.5%. Sister station Hit-Radio Antenne Niedersachsen also gained. Another private station serving Baden-Württemberg, Radio Regenbogen, gained 16.0%. Tiny Donau 3 FM, serving Ulm, received the blue distinction for the biggest listener loss by percentage.

Eins Live, the youth channel of Westdeutscher Rundfunk (WDR), ranked 5th nationally in hourly listeners, losing just a tiny few. WDR2, contemporary music and lots of news, and WDR4, easy listening music, ranked 6th and 7th, respectively, and both lost a bit more than a few.

Mitteldeutscher Rundfunk (MDR) main channel MDR1 – actually three local stations in Thuringia, Saxony and Saxony-Anhalt – ranked 9th, losing 6.8% hourly listeners. Private stations Hitradio RTL Saxony and Energy Saxony made significant gains.

Indeed, the Energy group of stations, more or less owned by NRJ Group, faired rather well. Energy Munich had the greatest increase in listeners by percentage, 61.7%. Energy Hamburg grew 39.2% and Energy Stutgart grew 30.3%. There’s a bonus due, certainly, even if Energy Rhein-Main dropped 30.5%.

Norddeutscher Rundfunk (NDR) adult contemporary channel NDR2 placed tenth among all German radio channels gaining 4.6%. One of the other significant winners was the famous Radio BOB! The Hesse-based rock station gained 44% listeners.

One observation, benefiting from German radio watchers, is that this particular survey was topsy-turvy for southern Germany. And part of that seems to come from the slight changes in listening among younger listeners, suggesting mobile phone and internet listening on the rise. Of course, there will be another MA survey in a few months.

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