T'was the night before RAJAR...

So RAJAR is upon us again! It seems just as a station gets used a set of numbers, along comes another set for programmers to memorise and quote ad nauseam!

The number crunching will start in earnest this evening.

A lot of the focus (as always) will be on London. Will Heart hang on to their well-fought commercial lead and increase their 7.1% share?

Will Magic make up lost ground? They’re sitting on a 5.5% currently and a firm number 2!

And Capital has sat on a 4.7% for the last 2 books. Will the major (and numerable!) changes at Leicester Square have had any short-term effect on the numbers?

Watch the reach figures for Kiss v Capital this time too. There are less than 20,000 listeners in it and Kiss could overtake Capital in Total Reach for the first time ever! That would be a big story for the guys at EMAP and a bit of a PR problem for GCap. We’ll see.

BBC Radio 4 will undoubtedly remain as having the largest overall share in the capital and both Radio 1 and Radio 2 will put in strong showings I suspect.

What else can we expect? Well – a good helping of digital stories is now par for the course. The rise of digital services like Planet Rock always makes for good headlines for radio groups trying to divert attention from fragmenting audiences in the heritage brands. Will Planet Rock smash the half million reach this time?

There’s no hiding from the numbers and in a few hours, everyone will have to have either their celebration speeches or “the changes haven’t really taken effect yet” emails ready to go!

We’ll absorb the numbers, pick over the bones, ignore the PR (!) and expose some heroes and villains in the next day or so!

Good luck!!