RAJAR Qtr 4 2010; "The numbers are in..."

So it was listening figures time again in the UK this week... and what did we learn?

Well, there are some nice headlines about 90% of the population listening to the radio every week and of course every group or station puts a shine on their particular figures, so no-one seems to be real loser (although of course they can’t all be right!)

A few things caught my eye.

First, I was disappointed at the rate of growth for Digital Listening with a rather modest 0.2% rise in the quarter to a 25% share of all listening via platform. As part of that, DAB was up 0.5% quarter on quarter, and still remains the most popular way of consuming digital radio (15.8% share), but I can’t help feeling that the momentum has slowed a little, and being a firm believer in the importance of radio to ‘go digital’ in future, it’s frustrating to see such slow progress.

What’s the answer? Well... more unique content and stations on DAB would help. It was encouraging to see the continued growth of stations like Absolute 80s (up to 665,000 weekly reach), Absolute 90s (cuming 295,000) and even the recently refreshed Planet Rock (with a new high of 827,000) doing so well. It shows that when there is great content or a different offer on Digital, listeners will gravitate towards it. Niche formats on digital seem to be the way forward. Just make sure your niche is big enough!

Talk radio is proving more and more popular in the UK with the growth of TalkSport as a format (now reaches over 3 Million a week), BBC 5Live gaining record audiences (now over 7 million), and 97.3 LBC in London (almost reaching 1 million a week), radio audience are lapping up mainstream and populist speech content. BBC Radio 4 has always delivered great audiences, but it’s a very different offering to the former 3. It would be great to see the success of speech radio in a local form in the commercial sector outside London; a trick has proved quite difficult to perform so far. Perhaps as some mainstream music radio does less and less speech, the ‘talk sector’ will benefit more in the future.

Meanwhile in London, Magic continue to outperform its commercial rivals taking top spot in reach and share. Its consistent blend of ‘light favourites’ and inoffensive links seems to be just the job for stressed out Londoners! As I write, they’ve just played Amy Winehouse - ‘Back to Black’ into Candi Staton ‘Young Hearts, Run Free’. Lovely ;-)

Capital are just behind Magic, and still sounding good. The benefit of their big TV campaign and the impact of the networking will be felt next quarter. Kiss have overtaken Heart into 3rd place in terms of reach, which is a great result for Kiss and will be naturally disappointing for Heart, who have really lost touch with Magic now. Next in Kiss’s sights will be Capital, and you can hear how tight the battle is between those two simply by listening to how close the music formats are in the daytime. Want Tinie Tempah, Bruno Mars, Rhianna or Mike Posner? Well either station will suffice right now!

So as the number crunchers do their thing, and stations up and down the UK have an explosion of PowerPoint and Excel, it’s nice to know that above it all, the UK is one of the most vibrant and creative radio markets in the whole world with some fantastic formats, and some superb broadcasters. There really is always something great to listen to... and the continued growth of ‘listen again’ / on-demand / podcasts etc, means that you don’t even have to worry that you missed a particular show.

It’s radio that waits ‘till it’s wanted.

Now that’s Magic! ;-)

Sponsored by...

How well does your station do sponsorships?

Take a listen to this...



Sound remotely familiar? Unfortunately, I can name plenty of stations where this is not comedy, but reality.

There are 2 reasons to play you that clip.

First, I was in a meeting today discussing a sponsorship for a station property and was reminded that sponsorships and sponsor tags can be an enormously creative tool for clients, providing the station has the balls to do something different and memorable... and providing the client has trust in the station, and allows it the creative freedom with its brand. Not all sponsorships have to be creative masterpieces... but plenty could be far more interesting and entertaining than they are. Not all sponsor tags have to sound like they do on ‘The Bash Breakfast’!

The second reason to play the clip was to highlight a great show currently on BBC Radio 4, called ‘Listen Against’. It can loosely be described as a ‘satire of Radio 4’, and it’s very, very well written and presented by Alice Arnold and the lovely Jon Holmes. (This particular sketch was written by Carl Carter). Now if you’re not familiar with Radio 4, its style and its output, it may wash over you a little... but it’s a very well targeted show, aiming exactly at Radio 4 listeners and poking fun at their network. The clip was from a fake debate they were having about creeping commercialism within the BBC, and they had a clip of some commercial radio to compare and to see if as Dr Fox puts it, “you hardly notice the sponsorships”.

Catch it on the iPlayer while you can!

“This blog post was brought to you by Lushy Bath and Shower Gel... Nothing cleans you more than Lushy”

Reach or Share?

If you looked at last week’s RAJAR figures released in the UK, and perhaps read a few of the press releases, you may have been slightly confused as to who is Number 1 in London?

Well – nothing’s changed insofar as the devil is in the detail and if you’re doing well in one metric you shout about that... and if you’re doing well in another, you shout about that.

Magic 105.4 are number 1 commercial station in share, with 6.1% and Heart 106.2 are number 1 commercial station in reach, with 1.881 Million listeners a week

And although they don’t shout about it as much, as they’re perhaps a little more restrained about such crass self-promotion (due to the “unique way they’re funded”) BBC Radio 4 are actually the number 1 station in London in both share and reach, with 14.7% share and 2.380 Million listeners a week.

At breakfast time, Capital have the largest breakfast show with 1.231 Million listeners whilst nationally, Terry Wogan’s much publicised last quarter delivered 8.102 Million listeners.

The biggest surprise was the growth of London talk station LBC, which has overtaken Capital and Heart to become Number 2 commercial station in share terms, with a highly respectable 5.7%. There’s no doubt that LBC is the star performer and gets the teachers 'Gold Star'!

So what can we glean from all this?

Capital’s current format is always going to deliver stronger reach than share. CHR always tends to do that, due to the deliberately repetitive nature of things. The average hours of 5.5 a week are actually pretty good. But Capital has historically always been about reach, so that’s the most important metric for that station I believe. Remember...reach before revenue!

Heart’s format should allow it to generate more average hours and 5.7 a week feels a tad on the low side. As we know, their ‘variety’ position is more of a myth (sorry... marketing position) than reality, as they tend to play a pretty tight bunch of songs over a week. So perhaps they’re playing more of the reach game than the share game currently.

Meanwhile, Magic seem to have got the formula right and although they may not play significantly more tracks than Heart in any given week, the image of being a ‘you can listen to us for ages’ station seems to have cut through... hence the 6.1% share. Plus there's no real significant difference between them in terms of reach and the other 2 competitors.

Meanwhile LBC’s average hours are up at 13.6 a week! They’ve got a growing cohort (841,000) of fans who just love that station. I didn’t know London had that many cab drivers!! This figure compares really well with say BBC London, who have 7.4 average hours a week and actually beats BBC Radio 4 nationally, which is at a mere 12.6 a week.

Often it’s smaller or more niche stations that have really high average hours. LBC has some way to go if it’s to be Magic 1152 in Hull (15.2), 107 The Bee in erm.... Blackburn, I think (15.4). And finally, come on down Premier Christian Radio with average hours of 16.6 a week. I know it’s difficult to compete with GOD. And some of those sermons go on forever...

So reach or share? Which is more important? Well of course, the answer depends on which one you’re doing the best in... and whichever that is, that’s the most important!

Actually – they’re both important. Lots of listeners, listening longer. And in London, this time, without sounding like Paul Daniels, you’d have to say... “That’s Magic!”