as Wogan comes out on top in latest GfK results

by MediaWeek, Media Week 31-Jul-03, 09:00

as Wogan comes out on top in latest GfK results

The controversial GfK radio monitoring service has delivered its latest set of listening results ahead of this week's official Rajar figures.
The company behind the service, GfK, has focused on breakfast programmes in its analysis, highlighting a massive slump of almost 66% for BBC Radio Five Live's Breakfast show over a 13-week period between March 24 and June 22, with an average of 1.44 million listeners.

Terry Wogan's programme on Radio Two is the most popular breakfast slot with an average weekday reach of 3.75 million adults, according to GfK, while the Today programme had 3.68 million, Classic Fm had 913,000 and TalkSport had 421,000.

However, TalkSport, whose boss Kelvin McKenzie remains the biggest advocator of GfK's system, is still the most listened to national commercial radio station, with a weekly reach of 16%.
Ben Farr, research manager at GfK, which utilises a wristwatch to measure radio usage, said: "We are very pleased with the consistency of the research so far through the quarterly period.
Meanwhile, the Today programme on Radio Four experienced a peak figure of over four million listeners immediately after the broadcast of Andrew Gilligan's controversial dossier story.