Radio

Maisie McCabe, mediaweek.co.uk, 04 February 2010, 07:00am

Rajars: Absolute Radio and Classic FM suffer heavy losses

LONDON - Global Radio's Classic FM and Times of India's Absolute Radio have both reported double-digit percentage drops in listeners year-on-year, in Rajar figures out today.

Absolute Radio branding with DJ Christian O'Connell

Classic FM remains the biggest commercial station with an average of 5.13 million listeners a week but its weekly reach is down 10% year-on-year and 5.7% quarter-on-quarter.

The classical music station's average listening hours in the three months to 20 December 2009 dropped 13.9% year-on-year, and 5.6% quarter-on-quarter.

Absolute Radio, the station formerly known as Virgin Radio, recorded an average weekly reach of 1.49 million people, down 5.9% quarter-on-quarter. However, Absolute listeners tuned in for a total of 11.27million hours which was up 2.1% quarter-on-quarter.

Virgin Radio re-launched as Absolute Radio at the end of September 2008 and only published two sets of Rajar figures that year.

However, if quarter four 2009 is compared with the average between July and December 2008, the weekly reach of the station is down 20.9% year-on-year and total hours dropped 9.9% year-on-year.

Elsewhere, UTV-owned TalkSport's weekly reach remained steady with an average of 2.5 million listeners, down 0.8% year-on-year but up 0.9% quarter-on-quarter. TalkSport recorded total listening hours of 20.43million a week, up 13.6% year on year and 4.4% quarter-on-quarter.

There were strong performances in digital-only stations during the period. Jazz FM, launched in October 2008, had an average of 446,000 listeners, up 7.2% quarter-on-quarter.

Planet Rock had an average of 698,000 listeners, up 2.6% year-on-year but down 1.4% quarter-on-quarter.

NME Radio had an average of 177,000 listeners, up 16.4% year-on-year but down 18.8% period-on-period.

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All Comments

Robin Burgess - 04 February 2010

not sure how you can describe an increase of 2% in total hours for Absolute as a 'heavy loss' #journalistfail

Robin B

Beks - 04 February 2010

Robin B - Reach & Time spent listening are quite different metrics... even if TSL is up, you're still only talking to 1.49 million, regardless of how long they're listening for - and those people are 5.9% less than were listening previous. Which suggests they have a core fan base which tune in regularly and keep the radio on, and the rest have now found somewhere else to tune in to.

Mark Griffiths - 04 February 2010

Hard to see why you'd need Classic FM and its constant barrage of repetitive ads and playlists when you've got Spotify or Last FM - effectively your own radio stations. These have to be eating into their audience.