Overall most stations are down year-on-year; only Absolute, Gold and Smooth have increased Reach since this time last year, while Gold, Magic and XFM are the only stations to have gone up since the last quarter.
One of this quarter’s biggest casualties has been Heart – down 294,000 year-on-year and down 389,000 quarter-on-quarter. In fact their weekly reach of 1,448,00 is the lowest they’ve had since Q4/2000 – nearly 14 years ago. Weekday Breakfast in particular has collapsed. Looking back at their figures over the past few years there have been other steep drops but they’ve always bounced back again.
Perhaps they are being squeezed by Bauer’s Magic as well as Global’s own Smooth – which also showed a small drop this time round following a steep rise in the previous quarter? Radio 2 was also down in London quarter-on-quarter.
Capital Xtra lost 230,000 listeners year-on-year, while Capital FM was down 171,000 and Kiss also down by 169,000. Year-on-year Smooth was up 300,000 while Absolute gained 108,000 and Gold was up by 90,000.
LBC (97.3) may also be down in Reach but its share of 5.1% – achieved thanks to very high Average Hours of 10.7 per listener – puts it just behind Capital in joint second place (with Magic) in the commercial radio rankings. The station also continues to rule the late night hours – even without the benefit of the 1152AM simulcast.
As usual I issue my standard ‘health warning’ about not taking a single quarter’s figures in isolation – Rajar is more about trends than a single snapshot so a year-on-year comparison is always the better one – you’ll find the charts for Q3/2013 here and Q2/2014 here.
You’ll also find some good, informed, analysis and observation from Matt Deegan and Adam Bowie while the general figures for each station are available on media.info, Radio Today and, of course, Rajar.
