Author: Matt Deegan

RAJAR Q4/2019

Sadly the day job, and a super early flight for Thursday has somewhat got in the way of writing a RAJAR blog post tonight. Apologies!

However, one quick thing, and then I’ll try and get into some more analysis when I have a little more time this week.

There were quite a few articles about children’s declining radio habit and many connecting it to the rise in smart speaker use. Here’s the normally excellent Matthew Moore’s piece in The Times. It’s based on Ofcom’s study: Children and parents: media use and attitudes.

The line in the report states:

“Of all the devices children aged 5-15 use, however, the smart speaker has seen the largest increase in use – from 15% in 2018 to 27% in 2019. As such, smart speakers have now overtaken use of radios, which declined from 26% to 22% over the same period.”

Of course, the interpretation is wrong, whilst the data is accurate. The use of a device may be dropping, but that doesn’t mean the consumption of the product is. Live radio remains the most used thing on a smart-speaker, so just because someone’s unplugged a radio set and replaced it with an illuminated blue puck, doesn’t mean that radio consumption has dropped. Indeed, it may mean that radio use has increased as children start to use a device better suited to them to listen to the radio.

In my day job of running a children’s radio station, I often speak at conferences and talk about the status of the radio in kids’ lives. In the car the radio is at the front, where parents sit, a child has to negotiate to get something played on it. In a kitchen, the radio is high up on a work-top, again it requires negotiation for a re-tune. In the lounge, it may be part of an expensive DO NOT TOUCH Sonos system.

The smart-speaker on the other hand, needs no hands. Any child can demand of it what they like, and, according to some research I watched, when I child leaned in to the researcher and whispered conspiratorially “it never says no”.

Growth in smart speaker use is something we’ve seen hugely at Fun Kids. On the 25th December in 2018 and 2019 our daily stream starts doubled and this then remained (and grew steadily) over the year. Smart speakers provide the bulk of hours to our internet listening now.

It’s also perhaps a contributing reason to why Fun Kids has had its best ever RAJAR results. Regular readers will know that RAJAR is an oddity for Fun Kids, you need to be a part of it to be seen as a ‘proper’ radio station, but it only measures 10 plusses – which is a bit annoying for us as our station is for under 10s! Therefore though we’re national we just measure our London audience.

So, according to the latest data, we now have 120,000 listeners in London and that’s outside our core demo! Just think what it would be if it actually measured all of our little listeners and we surveyed the whole of the UK.

I always like to do a sort of all the radio stations audible in London, by 10+ reach and see where we rank. This book’s been a good one to do that. In my list of 69 stations we’re the 39th. This means we’re bigger than (deep breath) the new Hearts (Heart 70s, Heart 90s and Heart Dance), Capital XTRA Reloaded, Magic Chilled, the Hits Radios (Hits Radio, Greatest Hits and Country Hits), in fact all the country stations (Smooth Radio Country and Chris Country Radio), Smooth’s other spin-offs Smooth Radio Chill and Extra, Heat, Kerrang!, talkRADIO and talkSPORT2, three of the Absolute digital stations (Absolute Radio 60s, Absolute Radio 70s and Absolute Radio 00s, Scala Radio, the Jacks (JACK Radio and Union JACK) and Virgin Radio’s current RAJAR’d spin-offs Virgin Anthems and Virgin Chilled.

So well done to our little team who works so hard.

It’s also perhaps an answer to the often mentioned, and frequently misinterepreted “but kids don’t listen to the radio”. Well, there might be fewer of them listening to a radio, but and more and more seem to be finding what we’re doing every day.

if you’re after a more comprehensive RAJAR round up, Radio Today has a great piece here and Adam Bowie some excellent analysis here.

RAJAR Q3/2019

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.

RAJAR Q2/2019 – Disappointment Haunted All My Dreams

RAJAR can be a cruel mistress. Whilst established stations can, some what, coast from past glories, new stations on the survey are thrust into the limelight whether they’re ready for it or not.

In the old days of course, a new station launch was a thing of excitement. The local newspaper would splash you on the front page and its photographer would have encouraged you to proffer some CDs, wearing headphones, with a selection of balloons framing you. The result – 20% reach for you banging out today’s best mix.

Today, your launch will not lead the local paper. Which has probably closed down. And your listeners already happily have the choice of around 80 stations on digital radio, which for many, is fixed to Kisstory, 6Music or still, amazingly, Radio 4.

Today’s RAJAR shows us data from two new launches – Scala Radio and Country Hits Radio, the beginnings of Global’s national breakfast strategy and the settling waves from the big changes in Q1 – Evans/Ball et al.

I imagine the folks at Scala are somewhat disappointed by a weekly reach of 258,000 listeners, and their big signing Simon Mayo pulling in 134,100. The good news is that he’s pretty essential – delivering 51% of the station’s cume, the bad being, well, less listeners than a jukebox like Magic Chilled (329k).

I enjoy listening to Scala. There’s obvious effort and forethought and an aim to do some different. Its challenge is explaining why someone should tune in. A station for people surprised to realise they quite like classical music seems a communication challenge.

Bauer’s Country Hits Radio on the other hand probably exceeded expectations. Its execution, and budget, was not in the Scala range and it’s distribution is patchy at the moment – but a similar audience delivery at 208,000 is pretty good. Its competition is from homegrown Chris Country, who are available in some regions in the UK, but only measure on RAJAR in London. If we look at that London fight, Chris Country delivers 23.4k reach vs Country Hits’ 25.9k – pretty close. However in hours, Chris Country delivers 223k vs Country Hits’ 67.8k. It’ll be interesting to see as Bauer’s station grows whether it can build the loyalty that Chris has conjured over the past few years.

With all new launches what I mainly look at, of course, is how it compares with my own station, Fun Kids. As I often mention, RAJAR doesn’t measure under 10s, which is frustrating for a station who’s core audience is below that! As such we just RAJAR our national station in the capital.

Therefore it’s pleasing to see Fun Kids (10+) in London is bigger than Scala Radio, Country Hits and Chris Country (as well as Virgin Anthems, Virgin Chilled, The Arrow, Kerrang, Greatest Hits, Jack Radio and Union Jack and more). Just think where we’d be if we measured the actual target audience too! Anyway, I digress.

It’s a bit early for RAJAR to fully reflect Capital’s removal of local breakfast shows and replacement with Roman, Vick and Sonny, particularly as many of the stations are RAJAR’d over half or a full year. For anoraks rubbing their hands with glee, I’m afraid both the regular numbers and the forced three monthlies that the industry can see, doesn’t show any major changes or audience exodus.

The big changes last quarter was Chris Evans’ jump to Virgin and Zoe Ball’s new appointment at Radio 2. It was pretty good news for everyone – Evans launched with a psychologically important 1m listeners, and Zoe maintaining Evans’ high water mark.

This time around, well, the dust has settled, and it’s not great news for Radio 2, who have seen their reach drop quarter on quarter from 15.3m to 14.5m, their lowest headline figure since at least 2013. On breakfast its hit 8.2m (down from 9.0m in the previous quarter), the lowest figure for at least ten years.

But Zoe’s listeners haven’t disappeared off to Chris Evans, who increased his numbers, but only from 1.04m to 1.10m across the Virgin Radio network. Indeed, the main Virgin Radio’s growth from 1.3m to 1.5m shows how outside of Breakfast, listeners are joining the station.

Virgin Radio’s owners, the Wireless Group – a part of News UK – has seen, this quarter a transition from a mixed local and national broadcaster to a predominantly national group in the mainland UK, following the sale of their local stations to Bauer (CMA willing). They had around a million local listeners contributing 10m hours to the group, but post-sale the growth of their national stations has meant the group is now delivering its biggest ever audiences.

Whilst they go national, some operators are doubling down on local. Nation Broadcasting have picked up some more local stations as Bauer have disposed of some assets to smooth their regulatory glide path. It’s probably too early to see what Nation will do with KCFM, Breeze and Sam South Coast, but the news from their core local Welsh stations is less than optimal. Radio Carmarthenshire, Pembrokeshire, Ceredigion, Bridge and Swansea Bay have seen their reach and hours drop both quarter on quarter and year on year. Some precipitously.

As is often the case in Q2, digital radio listening has dropped back a little. It now deliver 56% of all radio listening, rather than 56.4% last quarter. Year on year though, it’s up from 50.2%.

It did make me look at the reach figures for digital radio though. 72% of radio listeners listen to analogue radio each week, but 74% of radio listeners choose digital. We are definitely in a post-analogue radio world now.

Post-Christmas we’ve also seen a change in digital radio consumption, with internet radio listening, something that’s always been a laggard, suddenly taking a up-swing. In Q4/2018 it accounted for a 9.4% share of listening, Q1/2019 saw it leap up to 11.0%, and now it’s up to 12.5%. It would be hard to disagree that this has been fuelled by the rise of smart speakers.

All this shows how the more competitive market is making all stations – big and small – think about how they communicate and compete.

Adam Bowie has more detail about individual station breakdowns.

RAJAR Q1/2019 – Evans, Consolidation and Digital Growth

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.

CBBC Brings Back Crackerjack – who cares?

I had a call from 5 Live to chat on their Drive show about the news that the BBC are re-booting Crackerjack and the Demon Headmaster. They were after me as we run a children’s media brand called Fun Kids – it’s a national radio station, YouTube channels, podcasts, a website etc – mainly targeted at 6 to 11 year olds.

Of course, as is often the way, I was bumped for someone better, as they chatted to Stu Francis, Radzi off of Blue Peter, a CBBC commissioner and a media analyst.

I’d done a quick bit of research and had a think about what I was going to say, so I thought spluttering onto a quick blog post might mean that my 15 mins of mad browsing and thinking wasn’t entirely wasted.

First of all, I LOVED Crackerjack as a child. I even had the vinyl single of Stu Francis’ Ooh I Could Crush A Grape. It must have had a huge impact on me, as looking at the dates I would have only been 5 years old when it was on. But then again, not much else was.

Today that’s just not the case. As well as the BBC’s children’s channels there’s content from Nick, Disney and the Cartoon Network as well as Netflix, YouTube and mobile apps like TikTok.

In the 5 Live chat there was quite a bit of talk about the BBC public values providing elements of nutrition as well the bubblegum pedalled elsewhere. All very true, but the BBC’s focus on its linear digital kids channels and iPlayer catchup is probably disastrous for its valuable mission to educate and inform as well as entertain.

Consumption of linear television by children is dropping fast, minutes consumed has halved over the past ten years, and it continues to drop faster all the time.

Try and explain the concept of linear television to a 7 year old and they’ll look at you like you’re mad. What, I have to watch something that someone else has chosen?

It’s interesting to compare the top tens of the linear CBBC channel vs CBBC on iPlayer. On the telly its Odd Squad (US drama), Operation Ouch (UK fact-ent), Newsround (UK news), Dragons (US cartoon), Scream Street (UK cartoon). These top shows are generally getting a 20% share of 6-11s watching TV at the moment, which I guess sounds okay – but the draw of other kids and regular channels is clearly pretty strong. I also find it interesting that the stuff that does quite well – imports and cartoons – is what kids like watching on Nick and Disney. It’s almost like telly has trained them for what content works in that place.

On the CBBC iPlayer, the top three shows Dumping Ground, Worst Witch and Almost Never are all UK dramas. The fact-ent stuff is the bottom of the top ten, but it all starts to be a bit long-tail. The kids drama is what does well, with double or triple the number of requests.

I don’t think its that much of a surprise that high quality, appointment to view box sets are what’s doing well in kids iPlayer, same as it does for the grown up one, as well as services like Netflix.

In a world of infinite TV you’re going to seek out the good stuff. My hunch is for kids, when consuming living-room style television is its more the long-form, narrative stuff that they’re happy to watch.

The disposable has almost entirely moved to the internet and mobile and this is where shows like Crackerjack are going to fall between the cracks like a cabbage tumbling off a child.

The reboot will be presented by the excellent Sam and Mark and with a big studio audience and live interaction it looks like the BBC is spending a decent amount of cash on it. But using a brand with parental heritage and shoving it on a kids channel is the wrong place to put it. If you’re trading off parent affection and encouragement to watch – it should be on Saturdays at 5.30pm (or 4.55pm) on BBC One not on the CBBC channel.

I’m also not sure that a variety show is something that kids want to watch. The elements of it are things that they love – music, sketches, pranks etc – but they’re given much more regular (and naughtier) versions online.

The CBBC YouTube channel does just under 5million views a month. Morgz – a 17 year old Sheffield lad – with content attractive to 9 to 13s is doing 100million views a month.

CBBCs YouTube channel mainly does plugs for its shows and some best-of clips. The highest number of views they’ve generated in the past week is around 5k for a Horrible Histories song, most do less than a 1,000.

They are not particularly doing the things on YouTube that help grow an audience. Talking to people there, they know this, but there are internal worries about putting kids content on YouTube. The end result is that it’s a mess and generates no appreciable audience.

The main issue around kids content is that TV people believe that what was put out on television in the 80s and 90s was what kids wanted to watch then. This, like all media, is not the case. Kids liked it because its all there was to watch and the nature of monopolies meant no other content could be tried.

YouTube can be accessed by pretty much all children and it gives them the ability to seek out anything they want. Yes, of course, some of it is crap and some of it is dangerous. Though the vast majority of families work out ways to integrate it safely into their lives.

What its meant is an explosion in hugely popular new content types that were never put on TV. Unboxing videos (playing with things you don’t have), cartoon-based music television, watching people play computer games and vlogging – where individuals like you talk and communicate one to one. It’s also somewhere that disposable trends can be explored, exploited and discarded. The soaraway success of Fortnite comes from it being a format that you can easily play and easily watch other people play.

TV chose not to do new things. There’s nothing wrong with cartoons, comedy, drama, fact-ent and music-entertainment shows. But they’ve been running for years. Yes, of course there’s been innovation, but nothing on the scale of what we’ve seen outside of telly.

For teens, their acceleration of online consumption has been hastened by a near abandonment of them from broadcast television. Bye bye T4, ta-ra a linear home for BBC Three, see you later anything on BBC One or ITV. Indeed those channels have doubled down on programmes for older audiences and seen their average age grow to the late 50s. Even shows that young people like on the old terrestrial channels need to have ‘broad family appeal’ so Strictly can have youngsters tuning in, but only if Granny likes it too.

Indeed we have the odd situation where the panic of TV’s greying means that all of BBC Radio has had to pick up the slack to cater for under 45 licence fee payers.

Heritage TV operators like the BBC can’t have it both ways – you can’t ghettoise kids content to the digital channels where they compete in the EPG with 20 more and at the same time provide pretty much no digitally native content.

I’m sorry Sam and Mark, but the budget for Crackerjack should be spent on young producers making truly digital native content.

Oh, and Hacker should definitely be a vlogger (with his own channel).

RAJAR Q4/2018

The news, this week, that Bauer has acquired Celador and the Lincs FM Group is another reminder that we’re on the verge of an entirely consolidated sector. I’d also expect another few sales to go through in the coming weeks, leaving just a few stand-alone stations left. The unconsolidated groups – Communicorp and Nation Broadcasting – will likely be closely aligned with one of the main commercial groups.

The radio sector will pretty much become the BBC, Global (with Communicorp), Bauer (with Nation) and Wireless. Take a look at the chart below showing group, hours and share. There isn’t a whole lot of scale left to buy up. If you take away the big four, UKRD and ‘other’ (that’s the listening of stations that aren’t in RAJAR) you’re just left with 2.4% of the radio market.

I’ll just say that again. Only 2.4% of the radio market isn’t owned/sold by the biggest five radio groups.

BBC 510,579
50.9%
Global (and friends) 235,043
23.5%
Bauer (and friends) 164,649
16.4%
Wireless 33,331
3.3%
UKRD 5,852
0.6%
Q Radio 2,171
0.2%
Premier 2,067
0.2%
Sunrise 1,389
0.1%
KMFM 1,269
0.1%
Lyca 1,111
0.1%
Oxis/Jack 1,110
0.1%
Tindle 909
0.1%
Quidem 616
0.1%
Panjab 590
0.1%
Dee 326
0.0%
Other 25,358
2.5%

Bauer’s grouping even had a relatively bad book this time too, if we looked at last quarter they’d be 1 percentage point higher.

The nature of this consolidation means UK radio will be an almost entirely national branded affair.

Global started this over 10 years ago and now has its operations grouped into Capital, Heart, Smooth etc. Bauer’s always had strong London/national branded networks in Kiss, Magic and Absolute and now the local teams are gearing up behind Hits Radio and Greatest Hits Radio. Celador’s stations will probably slip into these brands pretty easily and I’m sure we’ll see the rest of Bauer’s local stations will now move across too.

Now, this won’t be without its problems. And the results at Hits Radio Manchester, the former Key 103, won’t encourage them to deploy the folder marked “Hits Radio roll-out plan”.

Hits Manchester hit an all time low with a reach of 270k – it was doing over 500k reach as recently as 2014. It’s also got its lowest ever hours (1.6m) though it’s had a similar number since the middle of 2016.

And this is where I pause to say perhaps the nature of audience figures has hurt it.

Key 103 had a huge amount of heritage. It had been around a long time and was generally looked on favourably by the city. That doesn’t mean they listened, of course, but I’d guess there wasn’t a lot of negativity around it. Back in my time at Leicester Square we often saw in the research that people were very positive towards heritage ILRs, but their listening had drifted off elsewhere. It’s something that’s incredibly annoying to face as you have to get people to re-evaluate a thing they like, but has for the station negative perceptions. Things like “it’s what my Mum listened to” or “it’s old fashioned”.

As often the heritage stations remain front of mind, when RAJAR pop round with a diary (filled in on paper, web or and app) and ask which of these stations you listen to, it’ll often be selected. This makes it easier to later give some listening time to (perhaps when you weren’t entirely sure which station you were hearing) and thus keep reach looking buoyant.

So Key probably got some ticks – some reach – that it probably didn’t deserve. A re-brand later and those bonus ticks disappear. Hence, a precipitous reach drop but hours being broadly the same. A similar thing afflicted Virgin Radio when it changed to Absolute – a hero brand generating some ghost reach until a rebrand.

However, will this Hits Manchester business still stop them doing something similar to their other big city stations?

On these FM’s, year on year there’s been some big reach drops. Hallam: 347 to 284; Viking: 203 to 136; CFM: 110 to 84; Forth 1: 351 to 315; Gem 561 to 469. At the same time there’s been some more positive stories too: TFM: 96 to 134; Clyde 1: 514 to 534; Free Cov: 122 to 141 with the rest stable. This constant split result always means a re-brand leap will be a gamble. How long before Bauer bite the bullet and get on with it?

Kiss in London took quite a hit with reach dropping to 1.6m (vs around 2m year on year and quarter on quarter). Capital London didn’t benefit much either seeing a year on year drop from 2.1m to 1.8m.

This resulted in the following commercial share scores in London:

LBC 97.3 5.5
Heart London 4.6
Magic (London) 4
Capital London 3.7
Kiss (London) 3.7
Smooth Radio London 3
Absolute Radio (London) 2.4
Radio X London 1.7
Capital XTRA (London) 1.6
LBC London News 1.4
Gold London 1.2
Sunrise Radio London 0.4

Over at Radio 1, the main station seems to have a bit of a downward trajectory. However, there is good news from Breakfast as its bucking the trend beating the station share, and growing reach.

Q4 was Greg James’ first full quarter, with a reach figure towards the top end of what the timeslot has done over the last three years.

Creatively I think the show sounds great, and is different to much of the market – it’ll be interesting to track over the coming quarters.
Q4 2017 Q1 2018 Q2 2018 Q3 2018 Q4 2018







Radio 1 – All Reach (000’s) 9,839 9,467 9,236 9,600 9,375

Share % 5.9 5.6 5.9 6 5.7







Radio 1 – B’fast Reach (000’s) 5,722 5,096 5,291 5,333 5,422

Share % 6.5 6.2 6.4 6.3 6.3

At Radio 2, Q4 was Chris Evans’ last quarter. He finishes up 200k on Q3, with just over 9m weekly reach. Over at Virgin, Sam & Amy went out with their best figures for a year at 166k reach. I imagine, next quarter, Evans on Virgin will come in somewhere between the two!

Eddie Mair moved from Radio 4 to LBC and this is his first book. He’s added 50k to Iain Dale’s reach, taking the show total to 715k across the UK. Iain, moved to early evenings has also done well, taking the slot from 540k to 599k.

Going back to consolidation – the removal of many of the smaller operators leaves more of a pro-digital stance in the sector and groupings that will make it much easier to switch off FM at some point.

The RAJAR figures for digital are again the strongest number so far with 52.6% of all listening now ‘digital’ and the remainder – 47.4% AM/FM.

DAB is listened to by 57.2% of listeners, which represents 38.3% of all listening. DTV contributed 5% of hours and the internet 9.4%.

And finally, when stations are axed, they generate great figures, so well done to Heat, it goes out at 652k and 2.6m hours. It’s best figures for two years.

More to read:
Adam Bowie, Paul Easton and John Rosborough

New Station Launches & Welcome Scala

News today of another new national radio station launch – Scala Radio. It’ll be a classical music station with, seemingly, a more contemporary vibe. It’s anchor DJ is Simon Mayo, who it turns out doesn’t need to spend too much time on his new books, as he’ll be rocking up every weekday from 10am to 1pm.

The station comes from the UK’s number two commercial radio group – Bauer. They’ve been on a march recently to narrow the hours gap with their big rival Global. As well as launching a raft of new spin off stations for Absolute and Magic, they’ve been trying to sort out their local station networks and have also been getting the cheque book out, acquiring Planet Rock and Jazz FM

Scala will use the space (and I guess the budget) previously used to broadcast Heat Radio, which gets reimagined as an internet-only music service.

Scala’s a much bigger play, however, with a fuller range of talent including the bods below, as well as previous Classic FM stalwarts Jamie Crick and Mark Forrest.

Bauer doesn’t need to ‘take on’ Classic FM to win. Classic’s brand position and distribution will mean it’s unlikely to be wounded too much by the new station. The opportunity for Bauer is to build something with strong hours, a younger demo than Classic and to bolster their ABC1 properties alongside Jazz FM. It’s more immediate task is to generate more hours than Heat delivered (2.2m) on, I imagine, a much higher budget!

New stations

Launching new radio stations today is tough. There are now 46 national radio stations on DAB and more than double that in London. Generating cut through and awareness is harder than it’s ever been. The excitement of there being a new radio station has been massively diluted.

We’re also way beyond the idea that “if you build it, they will come”. With apologies to Kevin Costner, but that’s a phrase that no longer rings true. It isn’t good enough to hope people find you, you need to go and drag them in.

Virgin Radio did two years with a solid but unremarkable 400k listeners before they pushed the boat out and snapped up Chris Evans (and probably more than doubling the stations’ operating costs in a moment). The big money move, and significant press coverage, will have finally lodged in people’s minds that Virgin Radio exists!

Interestingly, the rest of the Virgin Radio product hasn’t really changed – a little tweak on the music and line-up but otherwise business as usual. I would guess their research has shown what it’s always shown – what they’ve been doing is pretty right for the target audience – they just needed to discover it.

Scala Radio are trying the same trick with Simon Mayo. He’s not quite an Evans – but then again, who is? There’s the added complication that with a more niche music position, it’ll only ever be able to attract a subset of Mayo fans. But it does give it a head start in establishing itself in a competitive field.

I imagine Global will be disappointed that they let Simon slip through their fingers, and that Radio 2 will breathe a sigh of relief of where he’s ended up. And to continue to find ways to tell people about it.

Classic

Obviously the thing that really set up Classic FM’s success was my tech-opping in the early 00s. But outside of that, it’s always been one word that’s helped deliver its success – relax. Classic FM isn’t successful because it plays classical music, it’s successful because it delivers an emotional state through what it does. The market for a true classical music station has always been the same, before Classic’s launch and after – 2 million people. That’s the listening figures that BBC Radio 3 have always have.

The challenge, and I’m sure it’ll be a fun one, is creating a different environment that uses classical music to cater for another audience need.

Your 2018 Podcast Picks

The internet seems overrun with podcast lists, but most are driven by our American chums. On Twitter I asked you for your picks of the year. It’s unscientific, and there was a bit of spamming, but out of over 200 different podcasts suggested, here are the ones that got a few more votes than the others.

Happy listening!

A Gay and a NonGay
James and Dan discuss gaps in each other’s gay/straight knowledge.

Adam Buxton Podcast
Buckles interviews interesting folk plus walks with Rosie.

Athletico Mince
Bob Mortimer and Andy Dawson’s notionally football podcast.

Battle Rap Resume
Tom Kwei talks to the biggest names in Battle Rap.

Brexitcast
Human-sounding journalists follow every twist and turn.

Ear Hustle
Prison stories, produced and told by people inside.

Fortunately with Fi and Jane
Day to day life and interviews outside on the BBC piazza.

Help I Sexted My Boss
Posh guy and Northerner help you navigate modern life.

Kermode and Mayo’s Film Review
Film reviews and saying hello to people.

Live Lounge Uncovered
Behind the scenes as bands perform at Radio 1.

My Dad Wrote A Porno
See title.

Richard Herring’s Leicester Square Podcast
Interviews in front of a live studio audience.

Rule of Three
Comedians analyse/fangirl great comedy series and films.

Tailenders
Greg James, Jimmy Anderson and Felix White’s alternative look at cricket.

The Naked Podcast
Naked hosts interview naked guests.

The The One Show Show
The One Show forensically dissected. To death.

Top Flight Time Machine
Andy Dawson and Sam Delaney talk football and that.

Other suggestions with a few votes: 9yrspodcast, About Race, Adrift, All Killa No Filla, Beef And Dairy Network, Blood On The Tracks, Caliphate, Crudely Drawn Swords, Dan Snow’s History Hit, Friends With Friends, Griefcast, Guardian Football Weekly, Hamish and Andy, Intrigue: The Ratline, Joe Rogan Experience, Lineker and Baker, Love Island: The Morning After, Multi Story, No Such Thing As A Fish, Off Menu, Overrated Everything, Reply All, Sarcasm City, Secret Dinosaur Cult, Short Cuts, Slow Burn, Smersh Pod, Table Manners, That Peter Crouch Podcast, The Allusionist, The Bugle, The Cycling Podcast, The Empire Film Podcast, The Fun Kids Science Weekly, The Horne Section Podcast, The Rabbit Hole, The Two Shot Podcast, The Untold, Unfiltered with James O’Brien, Wooden Overcoats and You, Me and the Big C.

Radio’s New Localness Rules

Ofcom’s announcement of their new localness guidelines is the staging post for the eventual removal of the majority of local programming rules for FM radio stations. It’s a tough subject to talk about as the implications for the jobs of people working in commercial radio are potentially pretty significant.

Of course all industries are affected by market forces and the changing natures of society, just ask the 4,000 people likely to lose their jobs from Debenhams. Mostly though, changes are subtle as companies evolve and change. Local radio, though, has always had government regulation, so any changes see a rush for radio groups to align with how they want to run their businesses.

But why is radio such a regulated business? Mostly history. The first commercial licences were awarded in the early 70s based on a beauty parade rather than a cash bid (something that has continued until today). The thinking was that spectrum was a public good and limited. You would be one of few people able to broadcast to an area, but in exchange you had to promise some public good – news, current affairs, specialist music etc – alongside the bits of programming where it was easier to make money. As an applicant you were happy to do that deal because what you were getting back was a scarce resource and massive barriers to any competition as there were few licences.

Over the years the scarcity of that public spectrum has reduced. There are three reasons for this. Firstly, the regulator advertised more and more licences. Secondly, radio consumption became multi-platform – with people listening on non/less regulated platforms like DAB/DTV and online. Thirdly, the rise of technology and the internet meant that becoming a new entrant into music, audio and any form of entertainment happened without any barriers to entry. The value of this scarce FM spectrum has been dropping and dropping, so the government has taken the view that the operators of this FM spectrum can reduce their local committments.

Indeed, the government has recently gone much further than what Ofcom have just announced. In their response to a radio consultation they stated that pretty much all localness requirements and music format rules would go. But to have that happen will need an Act of Parliament and Brexit has somewhat filled up available parliamentary time. They did say though:

In the meantime, the Government is open to and would support any moves by Ofcom to consider, in the light of the consultation responses received, whether there is scope for changes to its rules and guidance in lieu of longer-term reform.

In other words, the changes announced by Ofcom are them trying to achieve Government policy whilst legally fitting in with the current laws.

So, what have they come up with?

At the moment if you own any radio licences within any of the regions here then you’re allowed to treat them as a single radio station – that is, generally, you have to produce seven hours of local programming (between 6am and 7pm) and that must include the breakfast period. For example what used to be individual radio stations in Cornwall, Plymouth and Exeter could now be ‘Heart’ and share a single breakfast show, providing they provided local news reflecting each of the licences each hour in daytime.

The new rules see two changes. Firstly the regions get bigger, and now stations only have to broadcast three hours of local programming within that region. That local three hours can be at any time between 6am and 7pm, and doesn’t have to include Breakfast. So with our Heart example what was Cornwall, Plymouth and Exeter as well as Bristol, Gloucester, Bournemouth and Southampton could now share a single regional mid-morning show with the rest of the programming come from outside the region – say from Leicester Square, providing they provided local news reflecting each of the licences each hour in daytime.

The most common question I’ve been asked about this is “what do you think the big groups will do?”. I’m afraid I don’t know. These are big changes and it opens up lots of different scenarios. Firstly though it’s important to think about what prompts a change – and that’s generally money – this is commercial radio after all.

From a business perspective, the value of the local shows are that they can drive local audiences, that the teams can deliver local sponsorship and promotions as well as being a local face for the radio station. Now there’s some costs for delivering that – the local staff – but there’s the revenue you generate from it through things like local S&P and events. If the local revenue outweighs the costs then it makes sense to continue with local shows.

The other assumption is that the group’s always deliver the regulatory minimum – and that’s not always the case either. At the moment if you’re a regional radio station that also broadcasts the brand nationally on Digital One, then you can stop doing any local content on FM. Kiss has taken advantage of this, broadcasting their London programming on London FM as well as their regional FM licences in the East and West of England. Capital on the other hand, which has regional FM licences in the North East and Yorkshire, chooses to keep regional programming on those stations when broadcasting on Digital One means that they don’t need to.

When I look at the new regions, which are huge, I wouldn’t be surprised to see groups create their own combination of stations within the areas that better suit their businesses – I don’t think they’ll instantly create super regions with one daily show.

If they do decide that the local sponsorship and promotions money is not a fair exchange of the costs of delivering local programmes, then the other option is, of course, delivering up to eight local mid-morning programmes and the rest of the programmes coming from London, or the network centre.

These changes are also likely to have an affect on the attractiveness of independent groups and stations for acquisition by the bigger boys. We’ve seen some of it already with Bay and Juice Brighton being bought by Global and added to the Heart and Capital networks. They followed this up with 2BR, which is likely to become a Capital. The rule changes make it easier for them to deploy their brands onto more FM licences with minimal local commitments.

So is this the end of local radio and local breakfast shows? I thought I’d have a look at what the UK listens to at the moment and what is potentially under threat with these changes.

Within my RAJAR tool I’ve created some new combinations of stations – Nationals (Radio 1, Classic, Planet Rock etc), Networks (commercial brands like the Capitals, Hits Radio network etc that are likely to embrace the new opportunities), BBC Local Radio and Locals (stand alone commercial stations plus groups like Nation, UKRD and Lincs who are less likely than others to make significant changes). As people can of course listen to multiple types of stations in a week, I’m using the share of listening that these combinations have.

The thing that surprised me is how dominant national radio is at breakfast time. 68.3% of all breakfast listening is to the national stations. BBC Locals, something that isn’t affected by the changes, delivers an 8.4% share. The Networks account for 17.3% and the Locals accounts for 4.4%. So, collectively the local breakfast shows potentially under threat are consumed by just a fifth of available listeners.

Personally I’m a little torn by the changes. Fundamentally I’m a radio fan and I like that there’s a variety of presenters up and down the country delivering local and branded radio. I also lean to being a free-marketeer. It does seem crazy that in today’s world that when faced with unregulated competition from Facebook, digital television and digital radio, that local FM licences are forced to deliver specific output.

I think localness is an excellent way to win in a market. It’s a great difference that can serve audiences and the bottom line. There’s also a growing number of digital-only radio stations that have chosen to be local stations (without any regulatory encouragement) as they think that’s the way to build a business. But, of course, it’s not the only way to do it (as the success of national radio with listeners shows).

Like all great mediums, one size does not fit all and radio is no different. These new rules, taken on their own, are a big change for many. However, outside of FM, there have never been as many audio opportunities. I imagine there are more radio jobs now than there were in the peak of the local radio in the 90s. From the growth of new national digital radio stations to developments in podcasting, radio production skills have never been in demand by so many people (and listeners).

 

RAJAR Q3/2018

This is the Summer quarter – July, August, September – which tends to give bumpier results than usual, as listeners disrupt their regular patterns and behaviour. Whilst this can generate hiccups that get corrected later on, it can also be a quarter that accelerates change as the alterations in listeners’ lives (and their favourite presenters going on holls) mean they can tune around and sample new stations.

All of this crashes into the big structural shift in UK radio listening – the increasing number of stations people are listening to, driven by a larger and larger percentage of the population becoming multi-platform radio consumers. 65% of listeners have DAB Radios, the arrival of a new class of radios – the smart speaker – as well as the phone (powered by WiFi and 4G) teaching users through streaming services and podcast apps, that their device makes a pretty good radio too.

In reach terms, 71% of the UK population now listen to some form of digital radio (DAB, DTV and the Internet) each week, analogue isn’t that much higher at 76%. But when you look at the share of listening, digital has seen a bump to 52%.

This shift is starting to have a greater effect on what we think of as the traditional radio battles in different parts of the UK.

The chart below shows the reach of all the stations in London. Stations in blue are the digital stations, the black the analogue originals. The top part of the chart is as you would expect, Radio 4 and 2 sticking it out in front, Capital, Kiss and Radio 1 battling, Magic and Heart and so on. But the digital stations are starting to have more of an affect. Kisstory is bigger than stations with FM licences Absolute Radio and Capital Xtra.  Indeed for Capital Xtra who have always been hobbled by a poor FM signal, are starting to reap the benefits of their digital distribution. In London they’re in a better place than 1Xtra with nearly three times the reach and leaving Global stablemate Radio X in its wake. Nationally, the service is up to 1.8m (800k ahead of 1Xtra).

Also, on the right hand side of the chart we’re seeing that the AM coverage of specialist stations is now providing no real benefit now when compared to the digital onlys.

Also if BBC Radio London is trailing Radio 3, 4 Extra and is neck and neck with the World Service isn’t it time for some drastic changes? A station on all the platforms with significant BBC resources should be doing better than 20th.

Looking at commercial market share and the battle for number one in the capital – LBC rides high with 6.6%, Magic then at 4.4%, Kiss at 4.2%, Capital at 3.8% and Heart at 3.7%. So once again Capital can say it’s the number 1 hit music station based on reach and Kiss can say it’s bigger than Capital on market share.

In Manchester the changes aren’t as marked, but they’re coming…

Kiss as a strong digital brand is beating a local FM station XS Manchester with Kisstory, Absolute 80s and 6Music not far behind.

Manchester is an interesting market as a heritage leader in Key 103 has had its first full book as Hits Radio Manchester. This has seen its reach drop from 374k to 325k, its hours have fared worse dropping from 2.2m to 1.6m – its lowest RAJAR figures ever.

I’m not entirely surprised, RAJAR is a recall methodology, so there’s always been a certain bias to memorable stations, to heritage. You’re recalling what you’ve listened to when you fill in that diary on paper, computer or your phone, so old stations are going to be more front of mind. They’re now the challenger brand in the market with Capital and Smooth being the heritage stations. It doesn’t help that these brands are backed by strong marketing and well-programmed output. Finding a niche for Hits Radio will require more marketing and much noisier programming. I’m afraid though it’s only likely to get worse before it gets better, I don’t think we’ve seen the bottom yet.

What is interesting though is that the new format – music, networked shows and production – has been rolled out on many of the BCN/Hits Radio network FM stations. Success has been mixed. Some increases for TFM, Hallam and Radio Aire, Free Coventry, but others have seen strong declines – Viking FM dropping to 129k reach from 169k q on q and from 217 year on year, it’s also about halved its hours. Free Radio in Birmingham’s running at its lowest ever audience 254k (down from 308k q on q, 262 y on y) and losing about a quarter of its hours.

Radio City saw its audience fall back a little to 344k reach/1.9m hours, but what has been growing is its relatively new FM sister – the AC Radio City 2. It’s seen gradual growth over the past year, now with a reach of 218k and hours of 2.1m, which means Radio City 2 has a greater market share than Radio City. This strong duopoly is about to be replicated in the West Midlands as Bauer flip Absolute Radio on FM into a similarly formatted AM station.

Over at the BBC, Radio 1 has pulled back a little q on q, back up to 9.6m leaving it relatively flat year on year (9.7m). This book shows a little positive news for R1 Breakfast, which is a majority Grimmy quarter, with a few weeks of Greg – it’s now at 5.44m (up from 5.37 q on q and 5.02 y on y). The next book will see how Greg fares.

Over at Radio 2, this will be Chris Evans’ penultimate book before he moves to Virgin Radio.  He’s seen a marginal drop – 8.8m reach from 9.0m q on q (and 9.3, y on y) this change is reflected in Radio 2’s top line figure – 14.6m (down from 14.9 q on q and 15.3 y on y).

A lot’s been written about Jo and Simon on Radio 2 Drivetime, you’d assume it was bickering and tone based on the commentary. The numbers however shown some small changes. The times are slightly different for the new show (5pm to 8pm rather than 5pm to 7pm) so it’s not directly comparable. But if you compare this timeslot the current reach is 5.5m – down from 5.9m q on q and 5.8m y on y, but not something mortifying.

More to read:
Adam Bowie, Paul Easton and John Rosborough