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RAJAR Round Up: “But look at our YouTube stats”, says Radio 1
By Chris Cooke | Published on Thursday 2 August 2018
Radio listening figures? Just out from RAJAR? Top five notable developments? Yeah, why not…
1. So, Radio 1 then. Its overall reach in the second quarter of 2018 was down 3.7% year-on-year to 9.2 million. Although it would like you to know that its YouTube and Vevo channel receives an average of 2.29 million views every day. And you know, it’s for the kids. The kids don’t understand what this radio nonsense is all about.
2. The big one, Radio 2, saw its overall audience rise year-on-year to just over 14.9 million. Though that’s down slightly quarter-on-quarter. So pick your comparison point and then celebrate or commiserate accordingly.
3. In commercial radio land, it was a good quarter for spin-off stations like Magic Chilled, Capital Xtra, Heart 80s and Smooth Extra, which all saw significant rises in audience size (Magic Chilled was up 49.8%!). Although the flagship stations are still the biggest, with the top five commercial channels by audience size going: Heart, Capital, Kiss, Smooth and Classic FM.
4. What about Bauer’s big relaunch of The Hits as Hits Radio with a sizeable marketing push to go with it? Well, Hits Radio had an audience of 804,000 compared to the 586,000 enjoyed by The Hits a year ago. Still modest compared to the big FM stations, but OK for a digital channel.
5. Digital radio listening – which is to say radio consumption via any digital channel rather than AM/FM – was up year-on-year, although down slightly on the first quarter of this year. It currently stands of 50.2%. Of that digital consumption, 72.3% is via the DAB platform, the rest being online or telly-based radio listening.
