Caveat emptor: radio shifts lightly

Michael Hedges March 23, 2008

Audience surveys are media’s life-blood. The fascination with ‘who’s up and who’s down’ is reflexive. Sure, the numbers have purpose; justifying either the ad rate or the license fee. But pouring over the data to divine a trend is tricky.

Broadcasters, for this reason, employ seasoned public relations professionals when audience surveys are released to properly position those ups and downs, lest a media buyer or politician become attached to an inopportune thought. When the German ag.ma radio 2008 I audience survey was released (March 5) the PR deluge was like a spring snow storm; lots of wind, nothing sticking. Once that sunshine returns, though, broadcasters decide whether or not the numbers bear meaning. The survey was taken in the last half of 2007.

Broadcasters take as an article of faith that big, robust brands weather best the semi-annual audience survey torment. With rare exception, the biggest name brands in German radio five years, six years, seven years ago (and longer) are, still, the biggest radio brands today. German radio audiences are rock solid, listening levels high and steady. Those rare exceptions, outliers the statisticians would call them, can, over time, become trends or, in some cases, points on a cycle.

If big radio brands tend to remain big radio brands, one trend obvious from the last several years of German audience surveys is big brand names slowly losing audience. The less obvious trend is more of a cycle: big brand name stations and channels lose incremental audience when challenged by niche targeted stations then rebound with some vigor only to crash two years later. Berlin-Brandenburg station rs.2 is one example. Antenne Bayern in Bavaria is another.

Radio NRW may be the most recent example. Long the highest rated of all German broadcasters this network of local channels dropped about 6% from the previous survey, when it had dropped another 6%. Still Radio NRW reaches 1.388 million listeners, the most of any single broadcaster in Germany.

Second place among all German radio channels is Antenne Bayern, one of several true iconic radio brands. It reaches 956 thousand listeners, down 2.9% from the previous survey period. Four years ago Antenne Bayern was in sharp decline, largely from reasonably strong competition. Two years ago it rebounded. Now it is falling again.

Bavaria is one of the most radio-friendly German States. Both in population and geography it’s large. Public channel Bayern 1 gained 3% to 748 thousand listeners and is ranked 6th overall nationally. But BR’s three other channels – Bayern 2, rock station Bayern 4 and news channel Infowelle B5 – all lost audience.

Radio Galaxy, a ‘funk’ flavored pop station, gained 15.8% and Radio Charivari gained 42.3% in Bavaria over the previous survey period. Radio Gong, surprising some, lost 27.3%. These are large percentages for stations with barely 10% of the audience of the market leaders. Convulsive shifts, and there were several in the recent MA survey, are not trends, taken individually. Brand specialists have a phrase for this statistical phenomenon: rattling around the bottom.

The trend, spotted in Bavaria and elsewhere in Germany, is the consistent audience increase of local stations. Adult audience packaged Radio Charivari, based in and targeting Munich, is one of the best examples. The sub-trend is that limited coverage stations targeting broadly fail: examples are Radio Gong and Radio Arabella.

There are 54 public radio channels in Germany. Their aggregate audience dropped 1.6%. This is a trend. Two of Germany’s biggest public broadcasters – WDR and SWR – saw significant audience losses with their powerhouse channels. WDR4 dropped 6.5%. WDR 2 took a fairly significant hit, down 5.4% to 678 thousand listeners. Taking the long view, since 2000 the public channel has maintained a slow but progressively increasing audience. In Nordrhein-Westfalen remains number three.

The same can’t be said for WDR 4, still a major channel for the public broadcasters. In Nordrhein-Westfalen it has slowly but steadily lost audience since 2000.

However, WDR’s youth channel EinsLive, relaunched in December 2006, placed 4th over all in Germany with 782 thousand listeners, up 2.9% and 2nd in Nordrhein-Westfalen. Public broadcasters youth channels had a quite uneven audience report. Südwestrundfunk youth channel SWR3, targeting 14 to 39 year olds, ranks number 3 nationally with 918 thousand listeners, down 3.3%. In Baden-Württenburg SWR3 dropped 6.3%. Hesse Rundfunk’s YouFM youth channel dropped 19.9%

Part of the rebound trend are aging pop stations Hit Radio Antenne and Radio FFH, two of the highest growth stations in Germany and both home the Niedersachsen (Lower Saxony).

The increase for Hit Radio FFH in the recent ag.ma survey comes after several years of, almost, steady declines in absolute audience in the Nielsen III region (Hesse, Rhineland-Palatinate, Saarland, Baden-Württemberg). It still ranks number 1 in Hesse, though losing 3%. Audience outside Hesse increased 23.7%.

Hit Radio Antenne reached 366 thousand listeners in total, increasing 21.6% over the previous survey period and 284 thousand in Niedersachsen, an 18.8% increase. Radio ffn reached 484 thousand listeners in the whole of Germany, 392 thousand in Niedersachsen, gaining about 7%.

Radio ffn enjoyed two years of growth and now takes 10th place overall in German radio, 484 thousand, up 5.2%. But this follows major declines in the early part of the decade. In 2000 Radio ffn was the top rated station in the Nielsen I region, northwest Germany’s States of Niedersachsen (Lower Saxony) and Schleswig-Holstein plus the city-states Hamburg and Bremen. Radio ffn’s audience bottomed out in 2005. The top 5 channels in 2000 – NDR2, Radio ffn, Hit Radio Antenne, Radio Schleswig-Holstein and Radio Hamburg – are still the top 5 radio channels. All have lower absolute audience in the broad region. And, too, all of those top 5 stations have generally increased audience since 2005.

Full service Radio Schleswig-Holstein held its leading position in the State of Schleswig-Holstein with a 28.5% market share (Monday-Sunday). Overall listening grew in Schleswig-Holstein about 4%, benefiting local stations most. Radio Nora (‘hits and oldies’) grew 13% over the previous survey.

In Hamburg, Radio Hamburg leads with 22.7% market share (Monday-Saturday, persons 14 years and older). Public broadcaster NDR takes the next three positions: NDR 90.3 with 15.5%, NDR 2 with 10.6% and NDR Welle Nord with 8.2%. Fourth place is a tie with 106.0 rock ‘n’ pop. Radio listening in Hamburg was off slightly less than 4%.

Bremen public channels Bremen Eins and Bremen Vier, another PSB youth channel, lost audience in the broad Nielsen I region, though Bremen Eins gained about 10% in the State of Bremen.  Bremen Vier was not so lucky, losing 22.1% in the region and 6.5% in Bremen. Energy Bremen, the only privately owned station in Bremen of any significance, lost 7.9% in the region and neither lost nor gained in Bremen. It appears Bremen channels generally lost audience to stations in Lower Saxony.

And then there’s Berlin-Brandenburg, or Berlin and Brandenburg. No Berlin-Brandenburg channel breaks into Germany’s top 10. Berlin-Brandenburg is different. Brandenburg is a State, mostly east, and Berlin is a city-state and capital of Germany.

All of the top 5 stations in Berlin-Brandenburg gained audience. Market leader Antenne Brandenburg gained 7.7%, mostly from Berlin listeners. BB Radio ranks number 2 and gained 13.7%, mostly from Brandenburg. Number 3 is Berliner Rundfunk 91.4!, gaining 7.9%, losing in Berlin and gaining substantially in Brandenburg. 104.6 RTL gained 11.5% for 4th place, gaining in Berlin and losing in Brandenburg. rs2 gained 12.3% for 5th place, gains entirely from Brandenburg. In general, Berlin listening levels are unchanged while overall listening in Brandenburg is up just under 4.5%. There are no public radio channels in the top 5 in Berlin-Brandenburg.

The trend, overriding all, is that big name brand stations are winning, often on the rebound, and challengers, sometimes big name public channels, are struggling.