Commercial radio ups share but youth audience defects

by Daniel Farey-Jones, Brand Republic 03-Aug-06, 08:45

LONDON - Commercial radio has pegged back the BBC's dominance and gained ground, according to the latest Rajar figures for national stations, but Radio 1 helped the corporation grow its youth audience during April-June.

After taking a record share of listening of 55.4% in the first quarter, the BBC fell back to 54.7% whereas commercial radio advanced from 42.6% to 42.9%.

However, while the commercial sector gained share of the over-45s audience, it lost share among 15- to 44-year-olds. Its share of this group fell from 54.8% to 53.8%, while the BBC's share increased from 42.9% to 43.4%.

The BBC's main youth station, Radio 1, benefited, growing its share from 9.1% to 10.3% and its reach from 9.73m to 10.42m.

The BBC's other network stations all had a worse quarter than January-March, with Radio 2 down from 16% to 15.7% and Radio 4 down from 11.7% to 10.7%.

Five Live, which would have expected a boost from the World Cup, suffered a slight drop in its share from 4.6% to 4.5% and its reach fell from 6.17m to 6.03m.

UTV's TalkSport, the national commercial rival to Five Live, experienced no change in its share at 1.7%, but its reach climbed from 2.07m to 2.21m.

There was no change in share at GCap's Classic FM, steady at 4.2% with reach up from 5.71m to 5.83m.

The third national commercial station, Virgin Radio, lost share, down from 1.6% to 1.5%, and reach, down from 2.46m to 2.34m.

Emap's Magic was the only one of the major quasi-national commercial networks to grow its share of listening. It rose from 2.2% to 2.3%, while the two Chrysalis networks were unchanged, Galaxy on 1.7% and Heart on 2.4%.

Further down the table, Guardian Media Group's Smooth network and GCap's Xfm network had a good set of results. Smooth's share went up from 0.9% to 1.2% while its reach climbed from 1.27m to 1.49m. Xfm's share rose from 0.6% to 0.8% but it pulled in only a few extra listeners at 1.08m compared with 1.07m last quarter.

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