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Uniting the city states of radio

Uniting the city states of radio

Andy.Haylett

Andy Haylett, director, Ipsos MediaCT, examines the key findings from the Rajar Q2 results – and after accidentally unearthing a batch of dusty old files, notes some fascinating trends from over the last twenty years…

It’s been an interesting few days for radio. At the end of last week, OFCOM issued a report about listeners’ attitudes with a particular focus on local broadcasting. Their report details how radio still has a place, holding its position against newer media, particularly the ways available to listen online.

Then we had the news that Bauer Media UK had struck a deal to buy Absolute Radio for a reported £22 million. Seems like a good deal to me, because Absolute has brought some genuine innovation to radio over the last few years. Hopefully this will continue and filter in to the Bauer portfolio.

Now we have the quarterly update of RAJAR figures at Quarter 2 2013. It’s generally good news for radio and the data seems to confirm the findings from OFCOM’s research. All radio reach has increased since last quarter – now an average of 91% of the UK population listens to radio every week. During an average week people tuned in to 1.028 billion hours of radio over the last three months; this is down a little on the previous period (1.034 billion).

There were the usual ups and downs amongst the stations – Capital maintained its hold on London’s commercial radio market, coming top again with nearly 2.2 million listeners a week. Kiss 100FM jumped from 4th to 2nd in the rankings, topping 2 million listeners for the first time. Heart remained 3rd (1.9 million) and Magic slipped to 4th with 1.8 million.

However, the gap between 1st and 4th is slim with only a difference of just 313,000 listeners separating them.

Digital listening also increased quarter on quarter and year on year. Reach via a digital platform is now near 53%, while 37% of all hours are now due to listening via DAB, DTV or online/using an app. Online/app listening now accounts for a larger share of hours (6.0%) than DTV (5.3%).

At a time when all standard televisions can broadcast radio, this demonstrates how internet delivered radio is really growing.

The other event that happened in the last week was that the RAJAR Team at Ipsos MORI moved floors in the building for the first time in well over a decade. Not usually of particular interest in its self, until I rediscovered a veritable RAJAR Museum of Curiosities.

Along with a copy of the very first diary from 1992, were hard copies of every Quarterly Summary issued by RAJAR over more than 20 years. They make fascinating reading, particularly in the context of the Bauer news and the reasonably recent purchase of (most of) GMG by Global.

Back in 1992 it was a very different picture, although radio was just as popular as it is today with a healthy weekly reach of 89%.

However, looking at the changes to stations and groups since ’92 is the interesting bit – there were only seven national stations on the survey (BBCs 1-5, Classic FM and Atlantic 252). Meanwhile the structure of local commercial 20 years ago was also quite different.

It resembled the Ancient Greek city states, or Europe pre-1848, when there was not much binding power holding the smaller entities together. There were certainly fewer local commercial stations compared to now with no dominant groups. Two or three individual stations were sometimes combined and they were independently owned.

Back to today and the Q2 2013 data, and it’s clear how things have evolved. There are more than 40 National stations and networks with significantly more local commercial stations, the majority of which have now been brought together under large owning groups.

Global is the largest of these taking nearly 37% of All Commercial hours this quarter. Add to this all the old GMG stations (although not all will taken in by Global) and they would command just over 47% of hours.

Similarly, Bauer’s portfolio takes 25% of All Commercial hours; expand this to include the Absolute stations and this will soon rise to 31%. This leaves only 22% of Commercial Radio’s hours to be picked up by the declining number of independent groups such as UTV, UKRD, Orion, and Lincs FM, as well as single independent stations.

Overall, RAJAR and OFCOM agree that radio continues to be doing well. Hopefully the new order of increasingly larger groups provides the sound base for further evolution to ensure Commercial Radio continues to flourish for many years to come.

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