Author: Matt Deegan

Some news last week from The Information, that EW Scripps are looking to sell their podcast business Stitcher.

Stitcher has evolved quite a lot since it started in 2008 as a sort of internet radio service/app that collated together podcasts into a radio-esque feed. It was acquired by Deezer to be their speech play in October 2014

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This RAJAR period covers the first three months of the year, so as people started to change their routines for the last two weeks of March, it will include a little of this change – but with a RAJAR week averaged across 13 weeks of data, it’s unlikely to have much of an impact.

A common theme on these blog posts over the past few years has been about change. The radio, and broader media sector, have changed as consumer behaviours have altered. For me, radio’s luck was to develop a digital broadcast platform, doing the heavy lifting of launching a sector-specific device – a DAB radio! – and new stations before broad digital choice became an essential part of consumers’ media lives.

The result of this early work, was that in the digital future we all live in now, the sector has a broad range of channels from new and existing brands, that it can deliver on the modernised version of it’s heritage platform – a radio box – but also now has the material to distribute on any device that has an internet connection and speaker.

Indeed, radio (a curated linear feed with plenty of human involvement) has ended up dominating new devices like smart speakers – even if it shares them with new shouty upstarts like music streaming services. Oh, and asking what the temperature is, before your government mandated exercise.

Looking at the splits – are ‘owned’ platforms of AM/FM and DAB now account for 41% and 40% respectively of total radio listening. Our piggy-backed platforms of DTV and Internet account for 4% and 14% of radio listening.

Collectively the digital listening of DAB, DTV and Online now represent 58.6% of radio listening, up from 56.4% a year ago – with DAB providing the lion’s share – accounting for nearly 70% of the digital listening total.

A lot of this digital growth has come from the commercial radio sector’s aggressive expansion of stations. It’s working audience-wise, the sector’s average listening is up year-on-year, to 13 hours per week, and its share of listening is up too, from 45.7% in Q1 2019 to 47.8%. It’s also got its highest ever total reach – 36.3m (vs the BBC’s 33.5m).

Perhaps someone can tell the Radio Times of this commercial radio strength. In a feature this week they got ten celebs to pick their lockdown listening. They only managed to pick Radio 3, 4, 4 Extra and the World Service (plus an embarrassed mention of Classic FM). Looking at the contributors, perhaps a more representative bunch of people may have given them a more representative range of stations.

London

The battle for the London airwaves has always driven a lot of discussion, much to the chagrin of the successful local stations in the rest of the country. It’s also a good way to describe what changes and what stays the same in consumer behaviour.

If we look at the market share of the top 25 stations in the capital, it looks like the left column today, and the right column 10 years ago.

BBC Radio 4	14.6		BBC Radio 2	13.7
BBC Radio 2	10.6		BBC Radio 4	13.7
LBC	7.5		Capital London	6
Magic (London)	4.5		Magic (London)	5.9
Classic FM	4.4		LBC London	5.1
Heart London	4.4		BBC Radio 1	5
BBC Radio 5 live	3.6		BBC Radio 5 live	4.8
Capital London	3.5		Classic FM	4.7
BBC Radio 1	3.3		Heart London	4.7
Absolute Radio	2.8		Kiss (London)	4.1
BBC 6 Music	2.7		Absolute Radio	2.6
Kiss (London)	2.7		talkSPORT	2.1
BBC Radio 3	2.6		BBC Radio 3	1.9
Smooth Radio London	2.4		BBC Radio London	1.5
talkSPORT	2.3		Radio X London	1.3
BBC Radio 4 Extra	1.5		Smooth Radio London	1.3
Radio X London	1.5		BBC 6 Music	1.1
Capital XTRA (London)	1.4		Capital XTRA (London)	1.1
LBC News (London)	1.2		Gold London	1
Kisstory	1.2		LBC News (London)	0.7
BBC Radio London	1.1		Planet Rock	0.7
Gold London	1		Premier Christian Radio	0.7
Virgin Radio	0.8		BBC Radio 4 Extra	0.5
Absolute 80s	0.7		Jazz FM	0.5
Magic Soul	0.7		1Xtra from the BBC	0.3

On the right, the digital stations were just starting to appear – Planet Rock (already on air for 11 years by this point) hits a 0.7 share, and today has, checks notes, a 0.7% share. Jazz FM, a couple of years into a digital rebirth gets a 0.5% share, compared to a 0.4% share now. Easy to sniff at, of course, but these stations have kept steady whilst competition has tripled.

Other stations though have flourished. 6Music now number 11 in London, just above Kiss and their FM licence. Kisstory, Virgin Radio, Absolute 80s and Magic Soul now make their mark too.

As the number of stations has exploded, its music that’s been the differentiator. There haven’t been many new speech stations on the block, and for the one that has appeared, Talk Radio, it’s been a bumpy ride. R4 has managed to grow, whilst LBC has moved up the chart, steadily growing and maintaining its share. 5Live occupies the same chart position, but not the same market share.

Magic, Heart and Capital are still top 10 but are finding their audiences salami sliced, not just by competition, but by their own spin-offs too.

Year on Year Reach Changes

Looking nationally, stations that have done well over the last year, reach-wise, including Virgin Anthems (more than doubling) and talkRADIO up 25%. Virgin Radio’s seen a 15% increase year on year (to a smidge under 1.5m) – good, but I’m sure they’d hoped for something a little larger.

Free Radio in the Black Country has doubled and its sister station in Coventry is up over 40%, the Birmingham branch – down 30%. That’s RAJAR for you! Radio Essex, having pocketed the old Heart Essex breakfast team have been growing, up 50% year on year.

What was Touch and is now Capital is up 76%, albeit from a low base. Digital station Dragon Radio in Wales has seen steady growth now with 60k listeners and nearly doubling over the past year, whilst our own Fun Kids has seen a 50% reach bump.

XS Manchester which was going to be closed due to poor audience figures has seen its year on year figures now increase 40% to 131k. Now saved (by the regulator), lets see if they keep it! In fact it’s good rock news in Manchester generally, with Radio X Manchester up to 191k – a 20% year on year increase.

At the other end of the spectrum, Capital Brighton hasn’t really chimed with its audience, seeing a 70% drop from 52k to 15.7k. Town 102’s regulatory-imposed analogue switch-off has seen it now just at 10k reach. It’s replacement Ipswich 102 has had its worst book of its first three – at 30k – but doing better than Town had done for the past few years.

Not a great result for Hits Radio Manchester down 23.4% year on year from 301k to 230k.

I’ve touched on the problems of heritage ILRs many times over the years. I don’t think there’s anything fundamentally wrong with the programming on Hits Manchester – I think the new Breakfast show has been good, the music is fine and the line-up are solid. It’s problem, like many new launches in super-competitive markets, is market fit. Can a station find a gap in the market, can it push that gap and make it bigger?

When listeners are spoilt for choice, a traditional mainstream offer has a lot of work to do to establish itself. It’s hard to drive passion when you’re playing pop songs and you don’t have heritage on your side. The challenge is to build talkability – with talent, stunts and marketing – on top of solid, well-tuned and researched programming.

Hits Manchester currently has a 3% market share. As the Hits TSA market share table below shows, older stations dominate, whilst many local stations are in a knife-fight around the 3% share mark. It’s easy to give Hits a kick-in but look at BBC Radio Manchester, it’s doing all the things people say Hits should do – play the local card – but it doesn’t seem to be doing it much good.

Fundamentally Hits faces too much competition in its format from R1, R2, Capital and Heart with specialist sport, dance and indie stations also getting in the way of any other hours growth. To break out it’s going to need to do something special.

BBC Radio 2	15.1
Smooth Radio North West	9.4
BBC Radio 4	9
Classic FM	5.9
BBC Radio 1	5.3
Capital Manchester	4.6
talkSPORT	4
Heart North West	3.5
BBC Radio 5 live	3.5
Hits Radio (Manchester)	3.1
BBC Radio Manchester	2.9
Radio X Manchester	2.9
XS Manchester	2.9
BBC 6 Music	1.9
Gold Manchester	1.4
Kisstory	1.2
Kiss	0.7
Absolute Radio	0.7
Magic	0.6
Greatest Hits Radio (Manchester)	0.6
Planet Rock	0.2

A slightly different table below, this is 10+ Reach in London. Usually 15+ is what’s generally published, but it’s actually people over 10 that are measured by busy RAJAR diarists. It’s always the one that I look at, as it makes comparing my station, Fun Kids, with our peers easier to do. Of course our core audience is under 10, which RAJAR doesn’t measure, so just think where we’d be on the list if they were measured too!

Still though, it’s good to be above all the Virgin and Smooth spin-offs, Hits, Greatest Hits and Country Hits, Heart Dance and Heart 90s, Scala, talkRADIO, some of the Absolute stations and many more too. However, just like all the data up to here, nothing stays the same – new competition in your format, your demographic or a talent change can make all the difference – good and bad. So enjoy it whilst you’ve got it, whatever it is!

	Q1 2020
BBC Radio 4	2921.1
BBC Radio 2	2278.6
Heart Network (UK)	2077.6
Capital Network (UK)	2051.9
BBC Radio 1	1483.6
LBC (UK)	1403.7
Magic	1391.3
Kiss	1363.3
Classic FM	1362.3
BBC Radio 5 live	1186.8
Smooth Radio Network (UK)	886.6
BBC 6 Music	859.6
Capital XTRA (UK)	808.3
Absolute Radio	807
talkSPORT	686.3
BBC Radio 3	649
Kisstory	618.7
LBC News (UK)	505.6
BBC Radio 4 Extra	487.2
Radio X Network (UK)	419.9
BBC World Service	398.2
Virgin Radio	367.7
Gold Network (UK)	306.5
Absolute 80s	285.7
Jazz FM	268.3
1Xtra from the BBC	258.9
Heart 80s	247.5
Mellow Magic	221.1
Kiss Fresh	205.8
Sunrise Radio National	194.9
Planet Rock	194.7
Magic Soul	187.9
Absolute Radio 90s	160.3
Absolute Classic Rock	150.9
talkSPORT2	134.6
Premier Christian Radio	122.8
BBC Radio 5 live sports extra	113.4
Fun Kids (London)	108.3
Smooth Radio Chill	106.7
Hits Radio	98.6
Smooth Extra	98.6
BBC Asian Network UK	97.4
Heat	93.8
1458 Lyca Radio	93.4
talkRADIO	88.4
Magic Chilled	83.8
Heart 90s	80.3
Greatest Hits Radio	79.5
Capital XTRA Reloaded	77.2
Panjab Radio	75.1
Absolute Radio 70s	68.8
Heart Extra	64.1
Scala Radio	56.9
Heart Dance	53.1
Mi-Soul	49
Kerrang!	47.7
Absolute Radio 00s	42.2
1035 Dilse Radio	42.1
Smooth Radio Country	39.2
Chris Country Radio	38.7
Asian FX	36
JACK Radio	33.4
Heart 70s	30.8
Country Hits Radio	23.4
Absolute Radio 60s	21.8
Virgin Anthems	21.4
Union JACK	17.1
Virgin Chilled	17.1
Virgin Radio Groove	7.3
Nation Radio London	3.4

Me and my RAJAR blogging colleague, Adam Bowie, are going to do a live stream later today, Thursday 14th March at 1pm. Keep an eye on Twitter for the link. If you have any questions, send them over and we’ll have a go at answering them!

edit: here it is

Want more? Radio Today generally has pretty comprehensive RAJAR coverage.

Times Radio made their first announcements this morning (27th April) outlining some of the key shows which will launch their new radio station (Guido Fawkes rumoured who’s next, last night).

There’s lots of talk about whether Times Radio will be a success, or a draining money pit.

Most of the analysis is about whether it will get ratings and how it will fare ‘up against’ Radio 4. Even in Matthew Moore’s Times article this morning there was reference to “taking on the BBC” and “seen as a direct rival to BBC Radio 4″.

If its core aim is to ‘take on the BBC’ then it will absolutely be an unqualified failure.

The aims for what I guess we’re still terming ‘commercial radio’ are more varied than they used to be. When the sector first started the planned business model was to get some listeners by doing the things that will get the largest audience and then to sell ads around them and try and make some money. This simple model wasn’t very easy to achieve for many of the first ILR stations for quite a while, additionally the incremental, Sallie, licences rarely achieved that objective in their lifetime. The old adage that to make a small fortune in commercial radio you just needed to start with a large fortune has been a truism.

Digital spectrum, and more space for new stations, has meant that commercial radio’s model, objectives and tactics have changed significantly.

Not every radio station needs to strive to be ‘number 1’ to be successful. Niche operators have created models that serve smaller audiences. Limited costs can reap solid (if not super) profits.

The religious broadcasters’ businesses are often fascinating. Some are really mail order firms using broadcast as a way to help position and sell product. Others use it as a loudspeaker to generate significant direct debit donations. Third party ads may be in there, but it’s not a big part of their business plan.

At Fun Kids we have a suite of products – radio, podcasts, web, email, video, social – that reach parents and children and we monetise, generally with ads, this attention. The broadcast station is important, particularly for marketing the brand, but it’s not the be-all and end-all of what we’re doing.

The Times have talked about the main objective of the radio station being to drive Times subscribers. Times digital subs are £15 to £26/month. If you generated 10,000 new subscribers you’d probably easily cover the costs of running the radio station.

The subscription business is also about reducing churn – the people who stop subscribing. With a content subscription like The Times, I imagine churn is all about perceived value. “Am I reading the written content?” is obviously a key thought, but if you’re consuming, albeit free, Times media like the radio station and podcasts, I’m sure that all goes into improving the perceived value too.

So, if you’re reducing churn and adding subs – that’s a great model to have. And a great reason to launch a radio station.

However, the danger, is mission creep and forgetting your objectives.

Dangers

I think I must have had discussions with at least 50 people serious about launching radio stations over the past few years and probably another 100 time wasters. In addition I’ve got friends at all the radio groups and have talked briefly, or in detail, about most big group launches. This ranges from production staff on some to the bosses on others.

Thinking about it, it’s amazing how few of these people have had experience launching any product from scratch, and for many, even less experience running a business.

For people new to the industry, it’s the curse that a lifetime of radio listening makes them think they’re experts in producing. Similarly there’s a difference in running an established, formatted station and creating a new one.

Creating a successful radio station, and cutting through in a market where listeners can get over 60 on their digital radio requires art, science, marketing and luck.

Now Wireless, themselves, have probably had the most experience in launching new radio stations – two speech ones with talkRADIO and talkSPORT2, along with a launched and re-launched Virgin Radio, so you’d hope they’ve got the experience to make a decent fist of this or at least learned something about the process along the way.

With any project, but definitely with radio stations, the biggest problem is drifting away from core objectives to do what you want to do, rather than what you need to.

If ‘competing with the BBC’ or ‘taking on Radio 4’ ends up being the core aim. I would say the strategy is officially, batshit mental.

Radio 4 has an annual budget nearing £100m a year, perfect FM and digital distribution, free cross-promotion on some of the nation’s favourite TV stations and over 50 years of heritage. Its listeners are happy to drift through hard news, a soap opera, and a programme about poetry without causing much channel changing. Its scale is such that 200k leaving a show is basically a rounding error.

Radio 4 currently has 10.9m listeners. Other speech stations in the UK have significantly less, with 5 Live on 5.4m, LBC with 2.7m (even with a London FM licence) and talkRADIO on 433k. After four years.

As another example, the relaunched Virgin Radio with the nation’s most popular DJ, Chris Evans, who swapped from Radio 2 to Virgin Radio with, to all intents and purposes, the same show, could probably be held as the high water mark of what can be done quickly on digital radio – in a year he’s added 1million listeners to take that station to 1.5m.

To hit those numbers would be unexpected – and a triumph, but would still have you at 15% of Radio 4.

Focus

The biggest issue for the Times Radio team is being distracted from the very sensible endeavour of adding new subscribers to the business.

The problem is that it’s not sexy or fun. It’s, of course, much more interesting going on the attack. But being focused on a competitor, like Radio 4 or the BBC, means you end up playing to them, rather than concentrating on your own objectives.

The amazing opportunity of being all about converting 10,000 new Times fans is that you can embrace this fortunate position you’re in of not worrying about the ratings. How liberating that would be? Indeed, why do you even need to publish your RAJAR figures?

Converting people to subscribers means a two pronged strategy. The first phase is listener acquisition. I imagine there’s probably two groups to appeal to:

1. (easier) Attracting listeners that are occasional or semi-regular readers
2. (harder) Identifying the types of people who would like The Times brand if they experienced (more of) it, by including programming that appeals to that target’s interests.

The second phase is turning this group of people into proper fans – to make them feel like the Times environment is one that interests them, represents them, entertains them.

Working out subscription conversion is difficult, but 2% of a station with 500,000 listeners would hit that 10k.

Content

For me the interesting thing to learn from NewsCorps’ existing research with Times subscribers is the interplay between news and non-news content. What’s the combination of content that makes people part with their money?

If I was mapping out the radio market, there’s a lot of delivery of news within speech content – big parts of Radio 4, most of 5 Live, LBC and talkRADIO. Of course I’d expect Times Radio to cover news, but it’s a brand with a strong features background, how do you weave that into the schedule? Podcasting has shown there’s a huge appetite for non-news speech, with the latest RAJAR MIDAS survey saying podcasting has now reached 10m people in the UK.

To create a tribe of listeners where you’re trying to build connection, Coronavirus or Brexit all of the time isn’t going to cut it. It also doesn’t differentiate in the market. Why fight for LBC or talkRADIO listeners by doing the same thing?

In a Buzzfeed News article last weekend, the reporting talked about the bringing together of The Times and Sunday Times (they’re currently run separately) and to “transform it into a premium, politically liberal brand like the New York Times”. Radio could definitely help with that.

Maybe it’ll be there when there’s more detail released, but if I was looking to create Times Radio I’d be drawing on far more built content – short and long form. I’d be drawing on the kinds of content in Red Box, Stories of our Times, The Game and The Ruck, Giles Coren and even Postcards from Midlife, Walking the Dog and Tales of Silicon Valley. These well made podcasts would reach newer audiences on a linear radio station and would provide texture that isn’t available on other speech competitors.

Indeed, if you are trying to re-think Radio 4, don’t get obsessed with the Today programme, remember that much of their schedule is actually built, well-thought out shows.

The word that keeps appearing in Times promo is ‘warm’. I think that’s a good word – and something that’s much more connected to the idea of building a group of listeners who you can activate to do something – subscribe.

Update: From the Launch Director, Stig Abell:

I think much of what you say is correct. We want to create something warm and welcoming and clever; we never talk about taking on the BBC. The business model is based mostly on building brand support (and subs) for the Times. And the main aim is finding the right audience.

— Stig Abell (@StigAbell) April 27, 2020

Here we go again. Another quarter. More data.

There’s a deluge of information. The number of stations keeps increasing, consumer behaviour is changing and this produces more and more information.

The data used to be easy to analyse, who’s up and who’s down. Now? Not so much. As well as station changes, we’ve got wholesale network alterations and a changing mix of which platforms people listen to.

When I get the data, the first thing I tend to look at is London. It’s the most competitive market. It has the most stations. It’s just a good place to start.

Usually I put up the commercial London market share chart, but this time here’s all the stations audible in London, looking at the share today, last quarter and last year. You can see the immovables in Radio 4 and Radio 2. LBC seems to have graduated to that point too.

Market share comes from total hours consumed. The stations with high average hours do well – and these tend to be the older appealing ones – R4, R2, Classic and LBC. The younger stations with shorter consumption lengths start to drift. You can see Radio 1, Capital, Kiss drifting below Classic FM, Magic and Heart.

As well as the hours pressure, Capital and Kiss have had tough times with breakfast too.

Capital London breakfast has generally hovered around 1m, but has seen a bit of a drop to 700k. Blip or trend? It’s always hard to say with a single wave.

Over at Kiss, Rickie, Melvin and Charlie left at the beginning of the year, so they’re still in build mode. Not unnaturally the figures dropped to around 700k, and now this quarter have fallen to 526k.

So where have all these listeners gone? The obvious place would be Radio 1. Greg James is a year in, with a strong show. But whilst he’s up year on year, he’s slightly down on the quarter.

Can the listeners have just disappeared?

Having a look at London’s demographics, 15 to 24s are the group with most volatility – and are most likely to affect the younger stations.

The chart above shows percentage reach of 15 to 24s in the key day-parts. In Breakfast there’s been a softening from a fairly reliable low-50s to a drop last quarter and this.

The other day-parts have been affected, but not so recently. They had their changes around a year ago. Are we perhaps seeing the end of a re-alignment from youth audiences? Had breakfast merely held up until now?

Meanwhile looking at the 55-64s, if you’re programming for them, you’re luckier as they’re a more, er, resilient part of the radio audience.

At the older end of the breakfast market, nationally Zoe Ball at Radio 2 has seen a fall to 7.9m (from 8.2m q on q and 8.8m y on y). Meanwhile her old chum Chris Evans has held steady up q on q to 1,114m from 1,110m. I imagine Wireless would have liked to seen some further growth, but the status again reaffirms the complexity in the market.

Looking back to the London market share table, the other big shift is the arrival of more digital stations into the mix. 6Music and Kisstory is bigger than FM stations like Capital Xtra and BBC London.

Digital Radio (across DAB, DTV and online) now accounts for 56.8% of listening vs 43.2% for analogue (AM/FM). When you look at platform more specifically, DAB accounts for 39.7% of listening whilst my calculations now show FM accounts for just marginally more at 40.7%. We live in a truly multi-platform radio market.

For me, though, the most important figure is that Fun Kids has hit its highest ever RAJAR reach of 105k (10+) in London.

This is a bigger reach than Scala Radio, Hits Radio, Greatest Hits Radio, Virgin’s spin-offs and a load more services too.

I think the figures are even more impressive because RAJAR only measures over 10s, just think what our numbers would be if they actually measured our core audience!

Our addition in the market is that of a small minnow compared to the investment the radio groups are putting into families of brands.

Where some individual stations seem weaker in the chart at the top of the page, this chart shows the London share when stations are grouped together into their new networks. Heart (which takes into account Heart 80s and Extra) gives a combined share of 6.2% and LBC picking up the main service and the rolling news channel (soon to expand to the whole country) gives it an even more impressive 8% share.

With commercial radio now just three larger radio groups, the idea of a single station being the be all and end all, is long gone.

Adam Bowie has more detail about individual station breakdowns.

In the radio industry at the moment there are two over riding themes:

1. The BBC’s relationship with talent and the effect on the whole industry of those presenters swapping stations.
2. The consolidation of commercial radio into, effectively, two radio groups – and their brand strategies to take on each other and the BBC.

Now, the results of this quarter can’t answer all those questions, but it can start to tell us a little about the future.

Chris Evans

This is the first book for Chris back at his “spiritual home” Virgin Radio. It’s not a full quarter as he started a couple of weeks into the survey, but it covered most of his opening tenure.

Whilst the re-booted Virgin Radio’s been around for three years, the arrival of Evans is close to a re-launch for the station. The station’s weekly reach has popped from 447k to 1,301k. A good number and way above the 850k most radio folk were predicting.

On Breakfast, Evans himself has done well – 993k listeners on the main station, and up to 1,048k when the spin-off’s Anthems and Chilled are added, where his show also broadcasts. This lets him hit the magic million!

What’s happened to Zoe on Radio 2? Well, er, not that much! She’s pretty much where Chris left – 9,047k (vs 9,065 q on q and 9,120k y on y). This is a great result for Radio 2. It’s also helped the network recover from last quarter’s 14.8m reach and now up to 15.3m. Year on year it’s stable too, with their reach figure 15.4m this time last year.

The last bit of premium talent to make the jump from the BBC to Commercial Radio was Chris Moyles. He joined Radio X from Radio 1 after a three year break at the end of 2015. Since taking on the slot he’s seen slow, but steady growth. Overall though, he’s doubled the figures and now he’s pretty close to Evans with a reach of 928k.

Next quarter we’ll find out how Simon Mayo’s fared with his move to Scala.

Chris Evans has clearly super-charged Virgin Radio, giving them a load more listeners to sell to advertisers. They do have a small issue with their ad-free breakfast show. Chris is clearly the main draw, but his show has an exclusive partner – Sky. If you’re an advertiser who wants to get onto the Breakfast show, that’s not something you can currently do. A tough sell for the sales team.

Pre-Evans, Virgin was delivering around 1.6m hours a week, they’re now generating a whopping 7.7m. BUT, only 3.4m are monetisable, as the rest sit in Evans’ Breakfast show.

1m listeners for Chris is a good figure, and one that will probably climb if they keep promoting it and if they can translate the content it produces into social media that really travels. Promoting Evans being there is one thing, but they still have their work cut out to communicate what the show’s doing on-air, to the non-listening public.

But one thing the show has done, is drastically change the profile of the station.

Previously it was 63% 15 to 44, now it’s 40%. The average age is up from 40 to 47.

Looking at the other breakfast shows, Kiss has a new line-up since the departure of Rickie, Melvin and Charlie with new duo Tom and Daisy. They took a not unexpected hit, across the UK reaching 1,787k (down q on q from 1,846k and y on y from 2,092k) but in London dropping faster to 671k (from 805k q on q and 968k y o y).

Over the road in Leicester Square, Capital London breakfast grew to 971k (up from 914k q on q) but down slightly (from 1,023k year on year). Roman and co now consolidate 3.7m listeners as their show goes national (the network up from 3.6m q on q, but down from a high of 3.9m y on y).

With many of the Capitals on a half-yearly measurement, it’ll take a little while to see the impact of the new national strategy.

This is Greg James’ 2nd book at Radio 1. It’s similar to last quarter – 5,044k (vs 5,110k q on q and up from 4,776k y on y). Delving slightly into the data, his share is up from 6.4% to 6.5%, whilst the station share sticks at 5.7%. If the breakfast show is leading the station, that’s good news for Greg, and a sign that daytime should probably pushing harder.

The way that Radio 1 splits the week, probably also doesn’t help. Greg runs Mon to Thurs, whilst Matt & Molly do Fri-Sun. Friday’s RAJAR have the lowest reach and share of the week (4.4% reach/5.8% share) when compared to Mon-Thurs. My worry would be that on Fridays people sample other stations’ breakfast shows, potentially giving them a reason not to tune back to Radio 1 on Monday.

Eddie Mair’s continued to grow audience for LBC, up to 756k for his drive show (up from 715k q on q and 663k y on y). Eddie displaced Iain Dale, who took the evening shift of 7pm to 10pm – somewhere he seems to be thriving too – with reach up again to 603k.

6Music’s got a new breakfast show in Lauren Laverne with the, er, slightly weird time of 7.30am to 10.30am. It works for 6, whose audience are probably slightly less commuter-y and it has the benefit of picking up a chunk of her old mid-morning audience too. Looking at the timeslot over time, she’s pretty stable, down marginally to 1,358k from 1,375k q on q and up from 1,326k year on year.

Consolidation

Since last we met, Bauer have been busy buying up radio groups, adding Celador, UKRD, Lincs FM and Wireless’ local station to their operation. Though at the moment they’re in regulatory limbo whilst the CMA decide if there are any issues.

Bauer’s rationale is all about building market share. Last quarter the group had a 15.4% share of the total market. If we add the audience of their acquisitions, last quarter they’d have been up to 17.9%. However a decline of half a percentage point at their own stations and drops at their new acquisitions take their total share this quarter down to 16.3%.

Global’s share meanwhile seems pretty static at 23.2%, the BBC is up half a point to 51.4% and Wireless, because of the Virgin radio, success is up nearly a point – 3.1% (from 2.3%).

It definitely highlights the need for Bauer to grapple with its stations, both new and old, to make the most of the opportunity.

It’ll be the next few quarters before we start to see how Global’s consolidated networks are performing, and it’ll probably take a similar amount of time to have an idea what Bauer are doing too.

Digital

Digital growth, partly driven by the Virgin Radio changes, has been very strong this quarter. Digital listening (that’s DAB, DTV and the Internet) now accounts for 56.4% of listening (with AM/FM at 43.6%).

Indeed, with AM/FM on 43.6%, DAB is now on 40.4% – so we’re approaching a point where DAB is the majority way of listening to the radio in the UK.