Overview

One or two surprises have made themselves apparent with the latest listening figures for Quarter 4, 2009. Which is good after the damp squid that was Q3.

Wogan has held his own as he left BBC Radio 2, handing over 8.1million listeners to Chris Evans. BBC Radio 1's Chris Moyles added 200,000 listeners but what did Radio 3 do to lose 320,000 fans?

In the commercial radio sector, Heart is back as London's number one station, followed by stable-mate Capital FM. It means former champion Magic 105.4 is now number three, when counting bums on seats rather than market share. If share if your game, Magic is number one and LBC takes 2nd place.

talkSPORT has registered its highest ever market share, and Absolute is pleased with its listener loyalty.

We haven't inspected all the figures for the individual Heart's yet, but Global Radio tells us the network of 33 stations adds 300,000 listeners year-on-year – which generally means the quarter-on-quarter figures weren't as hot.

Andrew Harrison, chief executive of RadioCentre said: "The figures for local commercial radio highlight that local commercial radio is at the top of its game and delighting its audience. With an increase in listening for all radio across the board, and the number of listeners tuning into DAB showing encouraging growth, it's clear that Britain loves radio.”

Digital listening share increased marginally this quarter (11.4 per cent to 13.7), but more houses now have a DAB set, which can only be good news.

Overall, 46 million adults (45.7m last quarter) or 89.6 per cent of the UK population over 15 tuned in to their favourite radio station each week in the last quarter of 2009.

This time round, Kick FM and Kestral are not taking part in the survey, whilst Kingdom FM and Yorkshire Radio have revised TSAs. There are change of names for Pulse Classic Gold to Pulse 2 and The Coast drops the "was Original 106" tag from their station reporting title.

Local radio RAJAR round-up

BRMB has hit an all time listening low with 66,000 listeners leaving the station in the past three months, and total hours continuing to fall.

The station, which is currently claiming to be "under construction" is hoping to return to its glory days under new owners Orion Media.

In the Global portfollio, Heart Northants reports its biggest audience in five years, Heart North Devon is also benefitting from the Heart re-brand and Galaxy stations in Southampton, Scotland and the North East has shown major increase in listeners.

Looking at the independents, 3TR FM drops back down to 23 per cent reach (from 27 per cent), Brunel FM has dropped from 18,000 to 12,000 listeners, Dearne FM continues to shed listeners and Juice FM Liverpool is down in reach and hours. (Seems all stations in Liverpool have lost this quarter)

Lite FM returns to RAJAR with worse figures than when they left, with over half the hours they had a year ago and The Revolution has posted a dip in listeners this quarter, but still show an improvement on a year ago.

Meanwhile, 3FM has an impressive yearly increase, going from 22 per cent reach last year to 33 per cent today and 107 The Bee continues to enjoy a high average hours of 16.2. At Tindle, Island FM Guernsey has the highest listening share in any area, with 35.5 per cent of people in their TSA listening whilst Channel 103 Jersey gains a weekly reach of 53 per cent.

Over at the Beeb, BBC Hereford and Worcester takes a hit on the total hours, which now stands at under one million for the first time in recent history, and BBC Radio Merseyside drops 24,000 listeners to an all time low of 279,000 listeners.

Radio Norfolk is down 22 thousand people whilst Radio Nottingham lost 28 thousand listeners this quarter.

JACK fm has its highest ever listening figures with an extra 7,000 people now listening every week. General Manager Ian Walker said: “Oxfordshire clearly appreciates having a truly local radio station which doesn’t just play the same 10 songs over and over, and which continues to buck the trend of homogenised, clinical networked radio. Thank you Oxfordshire!

At UKRD / TLRC, hours are up at Spire FM, whilst 2BR, Alpha Radio, Durham FM, and Minster FM see market gains.

Commenting on the latest result for UKRD, Group Programme Director Phil Angell said, “Does anyone ever read down as far as this on a RAJAR press release? Look, some of our stations went up a bit and some of them went down a bit just like has happened with the Heart stations. Mind you, if you look closely at our 25-34 males on a Wednesday lunchtime....”

Good on ya, Phil.

UTV Radio's national sports station talkSPORT has recorded its highest ever market share, and highest ratings for breakfast, whilst Absolute Radio and Classic FM both see a drop in listeners.

But whilst most stations go down after a re brand, Absolute Radio is happy with their increase in total hours – up 2.1 per cent this quarter.

In Golden Square, Clive Dickens, Chief Operating Officer of Absolute Radio told us: “Total listening hours are a strong indicator of listener satisfaction and we are very pleased with this result."

Global Radio's Classic FM is down to a recent low of 5.1million listeners, and market share is down to 3.5. Last quarter the station was on 5.4m and 3.7 share.

talkSPORT now has a weekly reach of 2.5 million, with 1.2m tuning in to Alan Brazil and Ronnie Irani in the morning. It is the only national terrestrial station to gain listeners this quarter too.

Scott Taunton, UTV Media (GB) Chief Executive, said: “This is a fantastic result, ending what has been a great year for talkSPORT. More people are listening, they’re listening longer and we have grown market share to a record figure in the face of increased competition.

Sir Terry Wogan has departed Radio 2 breakfast with a set of figures to be proud of, pulling in 8.1mlisteners in his final quarter on the show to match his previous record.

And listeners to the final Wake Up To Wogan will be re-united with the presenter on Radio 2 on Valentines day, as he starts his new two hour show from the Radio Theatre.

Tim Davie, Director of BBC Audio and Music, said “Terry is a legendary broadcaster and these figures show his popularity has never been higher. I’m now looking forward to tuning into his new show later this month.”

Sir Terry’s performance at breakfast helped to boost Radio 2’s weekly share to 16.5 percent, matching the network’s record high, despite a slight decline on reach from 13.62m to 13.46m.

Over at Radio 1, the stations reach and share dipped a little, to 10.76m weekly listeners and a new share of 9.9 per cent, however the reach is an improvement on last year’s figures. The Chris Moyles Breakfast show has enjoyed a lift in reach with 7.24m listeners now tuning in each week.

Radio 3 has lost 320,000 listeners in the last quarter, giving the station a new weekly reach of 1.87m and taking their share down to 1.1 percent.

Radio 4’s previous quarter seen them hit a record reach of 10.21m, it’s now back down to 9.84m but the share has climbed a little to match the network’s joint highest figure of 12.5percent.

BBC Radio 5 Live and Sports Extra now have a combined weekly audience of 6.19m, with Sports Extra contributing 663,000 of that figure. The reach is better than that of one year ago but lower than last years numbers. Share has also taken a tumble to 4.6percent.

The BBC’s digital services have also performed well, with BBC 6 Music growing their audience to 695,000, beating figures for the previous quarter and year. BBC Radio 7 is now posting an increased audience of 931,000 while BBC Asian Network and 1Xtra staying steady with audiences of 360,000 and 531,000 respectively.

BBC World Service now has a reach of 1.23m.

It's all change in London for the top three commercial radio stations, as Global takes the top two positions for number of listeners for the first time for Heart and Capital under their new owners.

Bauer Media's Magic 105.4 drops to 3rd place behind Capital FM at two and Heart 106.2 on top, for the first time in almost three years.

However, if you calculate your success by share, Magic remains on top with 6.1, and LBC enjoys the longest commercial hours at 13.6 (compared to Heart's 5.3 and Capital's 4.9).

There's not much in the numbers though, as Heart is now listened to by 1.881million, compared to Capital's 1.827 and Magic's 1.821.

Kiss is not far behind with 1.605million, whilst LBC takes 5th place with 841,000.

Elsewhere, LBC News 1152 has lost almost 150,000 listeners this quarter, and GMG's Smooth Radio loses over a quarter of its listenership dropping from 583,000 to 414,000.

Global's Ashley Tabor, Founder and Group CEO said: “This is a landmark day for Global Radio, taking the Number 1 and 2 positions in London! It’s a target that the whole team here has been working to for some time and I’m delighted the hard work has paid off.”

Richard Park, Director of Broadcasting at Global Radio said: “We have worked hard to consolidate and re-structure our brands and today’s results show our ongoing commitment is paying off. We’re absolutely delighted.”

Steve Parkinson, MD of Bauer Radio London said: “I’m especially pleased that Magic’s share is number one again."

An IAB study, in partnership with Opinion Matters, surveyed 80 senior marketers and found that 88% of brands rate social media as important to their business. A third of advertisers planned to allocate between 6% and 20% of their digital marketing budgets to it this year, compared with just 14% last year.

However, there’s still great uncertainty about which department should be responsible for social media in the business. While three-quarters of respondents (73%) said social media should come under the marketing department, it was also found to be the responsibility of PR (33%), customer services (16%), research (12%) and IT teams (7%).

The biggest issue for social media is ROI, due to its qualitative nature. 74% of respondents believed that proving ROI was the greatest challenge for the social media sector. Measurement was viewed as the major stumbling block by 64%, while 57% said that more education about how to best use social media is necessary

Only 7% of respondents haven’t embraced social media in any way, but only 22% have interwoven it into core communications strategy. Of respondents, 20% feature social media in the majority of campaigns, while 23.5% opt to use the medium ad hoc and 27% have tested it with a view to using it again.