Market In Turmoil, Big Brands Offer Comfort, Stability

Michael Hedges April 16, 2020 Follow on Twitter

At a time when attention spans are challenged, advantage goes to the strongest brands. Weight is tipped to those with proven benefit. Marginal offers are, for the most part, set aside for easier times. Such is the reality of choice and novelty.

Radio audience estimates for the Greater Paris region (Il de France - IDF) French measurement institute Médiamétrie covering the January to March period were released this week. Last week Médiamétrie presented national audience estimates. There are several differences; Paris is just part of France but all the important media buyers live there, certainly working from home. As with the national radio measurement period, data collection had been abbreviated by two weeks due to lockdown conditions.

Overall IDF listening was lower, year on year; 70.9% of the survey universe from 74.1%. However, average time spent listening jumped by 7 minutes to 160 minutes per day. Fewer people are listening but those who are are listening longer. This is not entirely unique to this measurement period or, even, to French radio.

Not surprising given the results of the national measurement, the top two radio channels are public channel France Inter and commercial channel RTL, part of RTL Group. Both are news-heavy general interest channels. Both made gains. France Inter topped the list with 14.8% share from 14.3% one year on. RTL followed with 14.6% share, up from 12.0%. (See Greater Paris IDF radio audience trend chart here)

Next was Europe 1, the long suffering general interest channel owned by Lagardère Group. Its audience appears to have stabilized somewhat; 5.9% share from 5.8% year on year. All-talk RMC - heavy on sports - took a deep dive; falling to 5.7% share from 7.9%. In March it lost F1 racing rights. At 5th place, public all-news channel France Info dropped to 4.1% share from 5.5%. Public broadcaster Radio France endured a strike during the period and shuffled assets to France Inter from France Info and other channels. Radio France International (RFI), which appears on FM in the IDF market, rose to 1.1% share from 0.4%.

Rap and hip hop channel Skyrock jumped to 6th place; 3.9% share from 3.1% one year on. Skyrock also made significant gains in the national audience estimates, certainly benefitting from its multimedia offering. And, too, several of its DJs are fixtures in the Paris urban music scene. Also making significant gains was pop-oldies channel RFM (Lagardère Group); 3.5% share from 1.9%. Further down the list, Rire & Chansons (NRJ Group) posted 2.1% share from 1.3%.

Local IDF stations, on aggregate, lost listeners. However, more local stations met the measurement threshold. Public alternative channel FIP (formerly France Inter Paris) led all local stations with 2.1% share, up from 1.8%. Radio Latina, often at the top of local IDF stations, dropped to 1.7% share from 2.6%. Other local IDF stations making gains include Generations, Tropiques FM and Voltage. TSF Jazz fell to 0.8% share from 2.6%. Arabic-language station Radio Orient returned to the Médiamétrie list.

See also...

• Hot Topics - Media in France