Commercial radio pulls back listening share

by Daniel Farey-Jones, Brand Republic 24-Jul-08, 08:30

LONDON - The latest Rajar figures show commercial radio has recovered listening share, from 41.1% to 42.4%, following the previous quarter's record high for the BBC.

National commercial stations' share climbed from 10.7% during the first quarter to 11.2% during the second quarter, which was the same as a year ago.

Local commercial stations did better, rising from 30.3% to 31.2%, although this was lower than the second quarter 2007 figure of 32.3%.

Andrew Harrison, chief executive of commercial radio trade body RadioCentre, said: "Our local stations have had a particularly good quarter with increases in reach and share, reaping the benefits of relaxed regulation -- our share of local listening is now 77%, up from 75% last quarter."

The BBC's overall share fell from last quarter's record 56.8% to 55.5%, with its network figure down from 47% to 46% and its local and regional figure down from 9.9% to 9.6%.

The drop was evident at its national youth station Radio 1, where share fell from 10.6% to 10%, and at Radio 2, where it fell from 16.5% to 16%.

Radio 1 DJ Chris Moyles' popular streak is fading; he lost 500,000 listeners in the last quarter. He now reaches 7.2m, while Radio 2's Terry Wogan is also down from 8.1m to 7.7m.

Overall the 15-44 year old audience reversed the previous quarter's trend and moved from the BBC to commercial radio, which saw its share in this category rise from 50.7% to 53.1%.

National commercial radio's strongest individual station brands, in terms of improvement on the previous quarter, were Guardian Media Group Radio's Smooth and Bauer Radio's Magic.

Both registered an identical rise in share from 2.1% to 2.5%. Smooth's reach was up 13.9% to 2.7m while Magic's reach was up 7.1% to 3.4m.

Other climbers were two Global Radio-owned brands: Classic FM, which it acquired last month as part of its takeover of GCap Media, up from 3.7% to 3.9%; and its Galaxy network, up 1.6% to 1.8%.