UK Radio Audience: What Becomes of the Broken Hearted?

Michael Hedges January 28, 2005

The BBC surges with Radio 2 reaching its largest audience ever, commercial audience shares lower.

BBC Radio 2’s command of the UK national radio market reached a new peak in the Q4 2004 Radio Joint Audience Research (RAJAR) audience figures released yesterday (January 27th). Each week 13.3 million people tune into the station. The channels market share rose to 16.4% from 16.0% in Q4 2003. Audience for the morning show, hosted by veteran Terry Wogan, inched past the 8 million mark.

The BBC’s contemporary music channel Radio 1 also gained share: 8.2% from 7.7% one year on. News and talk channel Radio 4 was flat, year on year, at 11.5%. BBC radio programming head Jenny Abramsky, in a company press release, expressed “awe” at the Radio 2 results. The BBC Asian network also topped the half million listener mark.

All was not as well a sports and talk station Radio Five Live. With no post-Olympic afterglow, the channel slid to 4.3% from 4.9% in Q3 2004 and 4.4% in Q4 2003.

Overall BBC channels hold 54% market share of UK radio listening, up from 52.9% in Q4 2003. Almost the entire increase is attributed to the national channels.

Commercial radio market shares continued to tumble, mostly from lower share of local commercial stations. National networks, including DAB-only channels, rose slightly. The combined market share for all commercial radio is 44.2%. The market share difference between the BBC channels and commercial channels has risen to 9.8% from 7.6% in Q4 2003. Classic FM broadened its position as the leading national commercial network, gaining to 4.4% from 4.3 in Q4 2003.  

The London market continues to compress as each station carves out audience segments. All but three stations lost market share year on year: Soft-pop formatted Magic 105.4 (#2) jumping to 6.1% from 5.0%, Capital Gold (#6) flat at 2.3%, and BBC London (#10) up to 1.7% from 1.0%. The combined market share shares of the top three stations increased to 21.0% from 19.2% in Q4 2003.

Capital FM maintained first place, though dropping market share to 6.2% from 7.0% in a year.

One fight among London stations has been for second place. Heart 106, owned by Chrysalis, slid to third place behind Capital FM and Magic 105.4. One year ago Heart topped the list - for one quarter - with 7.2% market share.

Stock traders expressed their lack of confidence in Chrysalis, selling off the stock and causing a 9% drop in the share price. Chrysalis also owns Galaxy FM, which remained flat in the national audience survey with a 1.9% market share. A company spokesperson said a new ad campaign for Heart is forthcoming.

In a trading statement released yesterday (27 January), Chrysalis reported a 3% revenue drop between September and January. Both Capital and GWR – the merger twins – reported earlier in the week similar “softness” in the UK ad market  

Several months ago the UKs commercial radio operators convinced RAJAR to release audience figures earlier in the day, giving them more time to prepare any response for the stock markets.

UK radio listeners seem to be listening more, considerably more, through devices that no longer have the look and feel of the traditional radio receiver, according to RAJAR figures added on to Thursday’s release date press conference. Listening to a radio channel via a TV set-top box like Freeview increased to 29.7% from 21.3% one year ago. Internet radio penetration is now 16.3%. National channels – BBC and commercial – are preferred over local channels by those listening via “non-traditional” devices.

DAB receivers have topped one million in the UK and most share a similar appearance with the traditional home radio receiver. The BBC’s Radio Receiver, which does all sorts of clever things like retrieving programs from the past week, was also released this week.