markettiers4dc blog

RAJAR update February 2012

nospam@example.com (Russell Goldsmith) — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 08:52:01 +0000

Paul Temple from our Media Liaison team gave us a pretty comprehensive round up of the latest RAJAR results so we thought we'd share it with all of you ...

The BBC remains the dominant radio player with 55.5% of all listening, against the commercial sector's 42.4%.
Overall, digital radio accounted for 29.1% of all radio listening, up from 25% in the last quarter of 2010.
Digital audio broadcasting (DAB) radio accounted for 19.4% of all radio listening, up from 15.8% a year earlier.
Listening via digital TV and on the internet dropped back on the previous quarter, albeit marginally, to 4.5% and 3.4% respectively.

So the movers and shakers!!

BBC National

BBC Radio 1
Chris Moyles is in danger of being overtaken in the popularity stakes by BBC Radio 4's Today programme, fronted by John Humphrys, which had an average weekly audience of 7.15 million in the last three months of 2011, a whisker away from its biggest ever listenership and just 90,000 behind Moyles on Radio 1, who had an audience of 7.24 million.

BBC Radio 2
Radio 2 remained by some distance the UK's most popular radio station with an average weekly audience of 14.27 million listeners, ahead of Radio 1 with 11.67 million and Radio 4 with 10.83 million

Breakfast Show hosted by Chris Evans had an average weekly audience of 8.86 million for his Radio 2 breakfast show – meaning he remains by far the UK's favourite person to wake up to.

BBC Radio 3
Radio 3 has a weekly audience of 2.10 million listeners – compared to 2.05m last quarter and 2.22m last year. The network’s share is 1.3%, up from 1.1% last quarter and 1.2% last year. Breakfast changes were controversial, but appear to be working as the station’s morning show added 149,000 listeners this quarter to hit a weekly reach of 703,000 (up from 613k in Q4/10).

BBC Radio 4
Radio 4 insiders attributed Today's growing popularity to big news stories such as the faltering economy and fears of a double dip recession.

BBC Radio 5Live
5 Live, which has just completed its more from London to the new HQ in Manchester, has lost nearly a million listeners to fall to its lowest audience since 2009. The rolling news and sport station pulled in 6.23 weekly million listeners on average in the final three months of last year. It was marginally down on the previous three months but 12.2% down on the record 7.09 million that it drew in the final quarter of 2010.

The latest figures are the lowest since its audience of 6.11 million in the final three months of 2009 with the year-on-year fall of the station's share of the audience proving even more dramatic, down a fifth to 4.3% from 5.3%.

A Radio 5 spokesman said it had been a record audience for the station at the end of 2010, when its audience was boosted by its coverage of England's victorious Ashes tour of Australia

"Radio 5 live continues to perform strongly, with 12 successive quarters above 6 million it remains highly rated by our audience. A year ago we had the excitement of the Ashes which were a key feature of many 5 live programmes including Breakfast and without doubt attracted large numbers of listeners. The figures quarter on quarter are virtually unchanged."

5 Live has faced increased competition from its commercial rival TalkSport in recent years, and lost a third of its live Premier League football matches to TalkSport and Absolute Radio at the beginning of the 2010/11 season.

BBC 6 Music
BBC 6 Music, the digital station that the corporation tried to axe, has celebrated its biggest audience of nearly 1.5 million listeners as it approaches its 10th birthday on the 11th March. 6 Music, whose presenters include Lauren Laverne, Jarvis Cocker and Elbow frontman Guy Garvey, had an average of 1.44 million weekly listeners in the final three months of 2011, according to the rajar figures released today.

Record audience for the weekday afternoon slot presented by Radcliffe and Maconie, drawing 477,000 listeners a week

6 Music was of course threatened with the axe in 2010 which prompted a huge protest from listeners and a big rise in its audience; it was later described as the best marketing campaign the station ever had.

With a 1.2% share of the total UK radio audience, 6 Music is now only a whisker behind BBC Radio 3, which has a 1.3% share of the audience. However, Radio 3 had rather more listeners, with an average weekly audience of 2.09 million

BBC Asian Music
The BBC Asian Network’s weekly reach was 472,000, from 477,000 last year and 507,000 last quarter

BBC World Service
Posted a UK reach of 1.39 million – from 1.46m last year and 1.50m last quarter

BBC Regional

No real year on year audience lift for the BBC's 40 local radio stations in England in the wake of controversial proposals to cut £15m from the budget and axe 280 jobs, although following a dip in Q2, we see a return in the last quarter, leveling the year out.

BBC local radio had an average of 7.3 million weekly listeners, up 45,000 on the previous quarter but down from 7.43 million at the end of 2010. Its share of the audience rose from 7.9% to 8.4%. The combined figure for Local Radio and National stations in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland is now at 9.60million listeners per week – from 9.50 last quarter and 9.84 last year.

About half of the planned local radio cuts will be reversed following an outcry from the public, politicians and religious leaders, although it remains to be seen exactly where the axe will now fall. David Holdsworth, Controller of BBC English Regions said:

“These figures show that BBC Local Radio has consolidated recent gains and is on track to develop further growth in the long term.”

BBC London
BBC London 94.9 had a weekly reach of 485,000 – up 2.3% on the previous quarter but down 3.4% year on year.

BBC Cornwall
Up from 152,000 to 173,000, 13.8% increase on the last quarter

BBC Radio Berkshire
Fell 12.4% from 145,000 to 127,000

BBC Radio Derby
Welcomed a big jump, 13.5% from 140,000 listeners to 159,000, a gain of 19,000 listeners

BBC Radio Humberside
Broke the 200,000 listener barrier, up from 175,000 to 204,000, 16.5% up Q on Q

BBC Radio Kent
Grew past the quarter million mark, with 259,000 listeners, just under 10% increase

BBC Radio Lancashire
Up 5.6% year on year and 12.5 on the last quarter with 243,000 listeners

BBC Radio Manchester
After suffering from a fairly consistent decline in listeners in recent rajars, Manchester finally welcome a return of listeners. They are up from 165,000 a year ago to 249,000 in the latest release

BBC Radio Stoke
The only real significant decline in quarterly results, down almost 17% from 209,000 to 174,000 listenenrs

BBC Radio Tees
Another good leap in quarterly figures from BBC Radio Tees, with a 23.8% rise to 135,000 listeners

Commercial

UTV

talkSPORT
Commentary from the 2011 Rugby World Cup has helped sports station talkSPORT post its best ever set of quarter 4 figures. The station’s 3.196m weekly audience is up 2% this quarter, and 3.5% year on year. 2.6m of its listeners (80%) are male and that its Saturday evening Premier League football commentaries are attracting nearly 10% more listeners now than they were 12 months ago.

Moz Dee, talkSPORT Programme Director and Sony Programmer of the Year, said:

“Continued investment in our product of live sports rights and talent is clearly paying off. We were the only place to hear the biggest sporting tournament of last year – the 2011 Rugby World Cup and it’s great news that the event proved a draw for listeners. The audience is growing more aware of our live football and I’m really looking forward to a big year with commentary of live and exclusive Barclays Premier League and UEFA Champions League matches before the end of the season, as well as the football event of the year – the UEFA EURO 2012 tournament.”

You can see Moz's appearance on markettiers4dc's Broadcast Sessions here:

talkSPORT has also released website and smartphone app figures to coincide with the latest RAJAR numbers. It says talksport.co.uk receives around 2m unique users every month and saw a 89% increase in users in December 2011 compared with December 2010. The station’s iPhone app had 928,000 sessions in December – the highest ever in a single month and a 65% rise year on year.
UTV Local

Signal 1 in Stoke was the toast of the group with a new reach of 310,000 (up 17% year on year).
Calum Macaulay, Director of Local Radio for UTV Media said:

“Signal continues to go from strength to strength. It knows its audience inside and out, is unashamedly local and consistently produces great radio shows. The station is right up there with the best in British radio.”

107.6 Juice FM in Liverpool’s hit its highest ever reach (195,000) and hours (1.5m)

Wire FM is up 22% on reach

Tower FM up 24% over the 12 months of 2011.

Macaulay added:

“We’ve posted some great performances and it’s great to see our investment in Live Premier League football and Live Superleague paying dividends. We are proud to be local and are constantly investing to improve our local engagement.”

Absolute Radio

71% of Absolute Radio’s Network total listening is now via a Digital platform, against a industry average of 29%.

Quarterly figures remain static for the main Absolute Radio station, but has seen a 6% increase in London. The Christian O’Connell Breakfast Show has increased to 1.2 million reach, up by 22.7% from a year ago and 6.2% this quarter.

The latest figures for Absolute shows audience reach increased by over 25% since this time last year. Absolute pulled in 1.6 million listeners, down marginally on the previous quarter but up 16.3% year on year. The station has 11.2 million hours, an increase of 18.1% year on year and 8.8% on the quarter.

Double-digit year-on-year winners among the digital-only commercial stations included the Absolute pairing of Absolute 80s, up 24.5% (but down 18.7% on the quarter) to 828,000 and Absolute Radio 90s, up 18% to 348,000.

Clive Dickens, Chief Operating Officer said:

“This is a strong RAJAR for the Absolute Radio brand, bolstered by both on the quarter and the year in the highly competitive London Market. It’s also a great set of numbers from the Commercial Radio Breakfast Show of the Year, Christian O’Connell”.

Bauer Radio

Across the UK, most of the Place (former Big City) stations are down in listeners this quarter, including Radio City, Key 103, Viking FM and CFM. Metro, TFM, Radio Aire, Hallam, and Cool FM all increased listeners.

Heat
Double-digit year-on-year winners among the digital-only commercial stations included Heat, up 16.3% to 648,000

Kiss
Fell behind Heart in London in terms of weekly reach with 1.87m, against Hearts 1.93m, however Kiss had the edge in terms of audience share, with 5.4% against Heart's 4.6%. The station has 4.2 million UK wide.

The Hits
Despite losing 12.4% of its audience remained one of the biggest commercial digital-only network with 984,000 listeners a week.

Magic
Flagship station Magic 105.4, occupys the number two commercial position in the capital, has enjoyed an increase in listeners. Figures are up quarter-on-quarter and year-on-year, helped by recent major TV marketing, guest presenter Michael Buble and a £100,000 prize competition.

Other Bauer:
Year-on-Year Radio City and Key 103 increased reach thanks largly to major promotional events.
Kerrang! lost listeners, as did Wave 105.

Dee Ford, group managing director radio, Bauer Media, said:

“Bauer continues to believe strongly in the power of building personal relationships with our listeners, and the continued year-on-year growth of our Place and Passion portfolios gives further evidence that our strategy is working. Bauer is connecting and interacting with more listeners and more advertisers by championing local talent and tailor made programming for our Place Portfolio stations, as well as investing further in our digital teams to create greater engagement from our Passion stations, with Kiss at the helm.”

Bauer Scotland:
Forth One is up 25.4% in reach and hours up 35.5% year-on-year, although quarterly listener numbers have fallen.

Clyde 1, MFR and Northsound 2 have lost a few listeners, whilst Tay FM is enjoying an extra 1,000 listeners this quarter and Northsound 2 stays static.

Graham Bryce, Managing Director Bauer Radio Scotland, said:

“After strong growth over the past year, this was a consolidating quarter for the Bauer Radio Scotland portfolio, with all stations retaining their market leading position.

Global Radio

Nationwide, Global's Capital network of stations was up 4.7% year on year to 7.08 million but sister network Heart – which has also been rolled out across the country – fell back 3.6% on 2010, down to 7.46 million.

Capital FM
Gone but not forgotten, Johnny Vaughan has left Capital on a high with its biggest audience for nearly eight years with 2.25 million average weekly listeners in the final quarter of 2011, up 14.9% year on year. Vaughan quit the station's breakfast show abruptly in November after nearly eight years.

The breakfast show remained by some distance the most popular commercial offering in London with an average of 1.32 million listeners between 6am and 10am. It was 16% up on the previous three months and nearly 22% up year on year. Overall the station regained the top spot among the London commercial stations from Bauer Radio's Magic.

Capital also had its biggest weekly reach since the first three months of 2004 – coincidentally the last quarter before Vaughan took over the breakfast show – when it had an audience of 2.34m but still has some way to go before it matches the 7.9% share of the London audience it had back then. It’s latest share was 5.9%, just ahead of Magic, which had 2.17 million weekly listeners and a 5.7% share.

Across the country, Capital stations in Birmingham, East Midlands and South Wales saw a drop in listeners this quarter whilst Manchester, South Coast and Yorkshire increased. Capital Scotland kept the same amount of listeners but saw an increase in hours. As a network, reach, share and total hours up quarter on quarter with an increase of 315,000 listeners year on year, with 7.1 million listeners now tuning in every week.

Ashley Tabor, Founder & Executive President said:

“I’m delighted to see Capital performing so well in London and across the UK. This demonstrates the network’s growing popularity and reinforces our strategy of national brands delivered locally. Congratulations to the entire team.”

Heart
Heart took third place in London in terms of weekly reach with 1.93 million, ahead of Bauer-owned Kiss 100's 1.87 million.

Heart London's breakfast pairing of Jamie Theakston and Harriet Scott slipped from second to fourth in the capital with 814,000 listeners, overtaken by Magic 105.4's Neil Fox, with 848,000, and Kiss 100's Rickie, Melvin and Charlie, who were listened to by 838,000 people.

At Heart, 11 of the 14 stations are down in numbers (including London), with only Heart Solent and Heart Four Counties attracting new listeners. In the East Midlands, where Heart is only available digitally, the station has an extra 15,000 listeners this quarter. Nationally, 7.5 million listeners tune in every week.

XFM
The biggest faller in the Capital was another Global station, Xfm, which was down 6.7% on the previous three months and 23.3% year on year to 406,000.

Classic FM
Had a weekly reach of 5.36 million, but fell marginally on the previous three months, down 6.2% year on year. Classic FM is down very slightly, but when you have 5.3 million listeners, it’s hardly noticeable. Xfm in both London and Manchester also have a small drop of listeners this quarter.

Choice FM
enjoyed a rise in total audience, with 778,000 people now listening every week. In London alone the figure has dropped from 562,000 to 543,000.

Richard Park, Director of Broadcasting at Global Radio said:

“A good solid performance from our Global stations. We finish the year with our three networks enjoying growth, particularly with the amount of time listeners are spending on our channels.”

GMG Radio

GMG Radio has seen a year-on-year increase across Real and Smooth Radio, taking it to 5.6 million adult listeners, but the figure is down from 5.7m in Q3. The figures include its London station losing 25% of its audience in the latest quarter.

Smooth Radio
Dropped 2.4% year on year and fell 25.5% on the quarter to 456,000. Smooth's national network had a weekly audience of 3.31 million, down 0.4% on the quarter but up 7.5% year on year.

Nationally, the station remains popular with 3.3 million listeners, 1 million of those listening on digital radio each week. The figures make it the UK’s second most listened to national commercial radio station. Simon Bates is celebrating his first year on Smooth Radio Breakfast and has grown the breakfast audience by 69,000 to almost 1.4 million a week year-on-year

Real Radio
All but one of the Real Radio stations lost listeners this quarter with Real Scotland being the exception. The Glasgow based station added an extra 26,000 listeners taking it back to the same audience it had at the beginning of the year.

Both former Rock Radio stations were also down in listener numbers this quarter after a re-brand to Real XS

GMG Radio Chief Executive Stuart Taylor said:

“To grow our listener number by 7.2% year on year in a competitive and volatile environment, is a fantastic result, confirming not only the appetite for Smooth Radio`s unique sound but also the strength of the Real Radio brand. I am so proud of our talented teams and really pleased the hard work of the last year is bearing fruit. Simon Bates on Smooth Breakfast is proving a huge success and our multi-platform approach has delivered a significant 17% growth in digital listening.”

Orion Media

Orion’s stations continued to lose listeners ahead of their upcoming re-brand.
BRMB had one of its worst ever audience with 331,000 listeners, from 359,000 in the previous quarter

Wyvern and Mercia are also down quarter-on-quarter and year-on-year

Beacon saw a small increase.
All four stations will change to Free Radio later this year.

Celedor

Midwest Radio has recorded a great year-on-year increase from 18% to 24% reach,

The Breeze in Portsmouth increases hours by 61% and listeners by 26% since last survey

Other notable figures

Town 102 in Ipswich enjoying its best ever reach, hours and share,

Radio Pembrokeshire achieving 50% weekly reach.
JACK fm Bristol continues to attract a higher audience after its re-brand from Original

Channel 103 gets its highest ever weekly reach at 59% and 11.7 average hours, and U105 is celebrating an increase of 69,000 listeners taking the station to 211,000.

Rugby FM and Touch FM Stafford (sister stations) have both gained listeners

The Wolf in Wolverhampton increased the amount of people listening by 52%, with an increase of listening hours of 49% year on year.
96.2 The Revolution in Manchester lost 11,000 of its 48,000 listeners

Minster FM in York had another increase in weekly reach, as well as a 23% uplift in hours since last reporting period.

To see all of the rajar results see here: http://www.rajar.co.uk/listening/quarterly_listening.php

The Rajar Round Up

nospam@example.com () — Thu, 27 Oct 2011 20:20:05 +0100

The latest RAJAR figures show 47.1m people listened to radio in the UK in the last three months – an increase from this time last year but a drop compared with Quarter 2 of 2011.

In London Capital FM (2.179m reach) has regained the number one commercial radio spot, with Global Radio’s Heart brand (2.027m) also overtaking Magic to take second place. Magic (1.993m) is third, with Bauer sister station Kiss (1.703m) in fourth place.

Mixed results for Global though in the capital, as XFM is the worst performing commercial radio station over the year, losing 19.4% of its audience in 12 months to give a reach of just 435,000 – leaving it now below both Smooth and Choice. Global’s urban music station added 17% to its audience over the year to give a new reach of 562,000 in Q3/2011.

Nationally Radio 2 remains the biggest UK radio station, hitting 14m in a quarter 3 period for the first time and increasing its audience size by 4.6% year on year. Radio 1 and Radio 4 also increased their reach, but there were drops for Radio 3 (down 4.3%) and 5 Live (down 0.9%).

Digital stations Absolute 80s and Absolute 90s saw major growth with audience sizes up 80% over the last year. Absolute’s total audience across all stations is down 3% in 12 months, while Classic FM has lost 5%. talkSPORT’s reach is up 5.8% nationally, although in London it’s down 15%.

90.7% of the 15+ population listened to radio during the three months to the end of September – it’s a year-on-year increase for the medium but a slight drop compared with the previous quarter. Total listening hours are up year on year to 1,076m hours per week (compared with 1,055m in Q3/10) but remain the same as the last set of figures which were out in August.

In terms of the share between the BBC and commercial radio, the split is now 54.5% BBC, 43.3% Commercial. There have been quarter-on-quarter share increases for BBC Network radio and Local Commercial radio, while BBC Local and National Commercial’s share have fallen slightly.

Listening hours to digital radio are up 14% in a year to 28.2%. This accounts for more than 300m hours for the first time – up from 262m in Q3/10. 29.3% of the BBC’s listening is done via digital platforms, while in commercial radio that figure is 26.8. As has always been the case, commercial radio outperforms the BBC for listening via digital television

48.4% of listeners do some digital platform listening each week, while DAB accounts for 18% of listening – that’s up from just over 15% this time last year. In addition we’re told that two in five people now live in a house with a DAB radio

Ford Ennals, Chief Executive of Digital Radio UK, said: “Quarter 3 has shown more evidence of the irresistible momentum behind digital listening. DAB hours are up 20% and online hours are up 32% year on year, and these are the two strategic growth platforms for the future of digital radio in the UK. With the increases in coverage and availability in cars, the remarkable progress of Radioplayer and with a major communications campaign about to start, we would expect digital radio listening to accelerate towards 30%.”

RadioCentre, which represents commercial radio operators, says that the impact of online listening platform , which launched in April is clear to see, with 10.4% of the population now tuning into their favourite stations via the internet every week. Its Chief Executive, Andrew Harrison said: “There is no doubt that the unique musical and editorial offerings from commercial radio stations continue to have a resonance with our listeners. It is increasingly clear that this content can be delivered successfully in a multitude of different ways and platforms. Whether stations are part of a national brand or local proposition, audiences know that if you want music, entertainment and information, you should tune in to a commercial station.”

National movers and shakers...

BBC Radio 2
A number of Radio 2 shows achieved their biggest ever audiences, including weekday morning host Ken Bruce with 7.52 million, drivetime DJ Simon Mayo with 5.68 million and veteran presenter Desmond Carrington, with an average audience of 710,000 for his Friday evening show broadcast live from his home in Perthshire.
The Chris Evans Breakfast Show which launched at the beginning of last year, grew his audience by another 200,000 listeners to 8.86 million, giving him his biggest-ever lead over Chris Moyles of 1.7 million, narrowly eclipsing Evans's previous biggest advantage over Moyles, of 1.66 million in the first three months of this year.

Total audience for Radio 2 grew 4.6% year-on-year to 14.31 million, meaning it remains by some distance the most popular radio station in the UK.

BBC Radio 1
Has grown to its biggest audience for more than a decade despite the station's breakfast presenter Chris Moyles falling further behind his BBC Radio 2 rival, Chris Evans.
Radio 1 had an average weekly reach of 11.85 million listeners in the three months to 18 September, according to official Rajar figures published on Thursday.
This was the station's highest quarterly listening figures since new audience methodology was introduced in 1999.
But Moyles, who has long harboured hopes of becoming the nation's most popular breakfast DJ, lost more than 250,000 listeners on the previous quarter, down to 7.16 million.
The record Radio 1 audience will be seen as a fitting legacy for its former controller of 13 years, Andy Parfitt, who left the station at the end of July and has joined the ad agency Saatchi & Saatchi.
Radio 1 is now overseen by the acting controller – and firm favourite for the full-time job – Ben Cooper, who said: "I am thrilled that we've achieved a record reach for Radio 1.
"Whether it was standing in a muddy field in wellies or being in a club in Ibiza, this summer was all about us getting out and about reflecting the best live and new music from UK festivals and abroad.
"Plus, Scott Mills and Nick Grimshaw returned to the Edinburgh Festival Fringe where, digitally, we continued to pioneer ways of listening and talking to our young audience via our new website, the BBC Red Button and on Facebook, Twitter and Skype."
BBC Radio 4
The Today Programme saw a dip in listeners to an average weekly reach of 6,508,000. This compared with a record weekly listening total (under the current system) of 7,184,000 in the second quarter of this year and 6,759,000 in the third quarter of last year.
Overall Radio 4 slipped back 2.8% on the previous quarter but was up 1.8% year-on-year to 10.56 million weekly listeners.
The digital station BBC Radio 4 Extra fell back from its record-breaking debut in the previous quarter – it was previously called BBC Radio 7 – down 4.9% to 1.53 million

BBC Radio 5 Live
Radio 5 Live – in the process of moving from London to Salford – fell back 4.7% on the previous quarter and 0.9% year-on-year to 6.24 million. But there were big gains for Radio 5 Live's digital sister station, Radio 5 Live Extra. Boosted by Test Match Special coverage of England's 4-0 cricket whitewash of India, it was up 77.5% year-on-year to 1.15 million.

BBC 6Music
Fell 3.2% on the previous three months but up 2.8% year-on-year to 1.23 million – as the BBC's most popular digital-only service.

BBC Asian Network
Reprieved from the axe like 6 Music – continued to make gains, up 9.7% year-on-year to 507,000

BBC World Service
Posted a UK reach of 1.50 million, from 1.32m last year, while BBC Local / Regional radio reached 9.50 million listeners per week – from 9.14m last year and 9.65m last quarter.

Tim Davie, Director BBC Audio & Music, said: “It is excellent to see people listening to so many hours of BBC Radio. In particular, the record Radio 1 figures reflect both the distinctiveness of its programmes and the strength of an outstanding team. I’m also very pleased to see that the combined efforts of the radio industry are resulting in a clear transition of listeners into digital radio. The rise in internet listening is noteworthy and represents encouraging growth in the sector.”

….and locally

…… it’s continuing to thrive! Many stations have seen a large increase in listeners on FM in the last 12 months.
In Ipswich, Town 102 has almost doubled its audience, Eagle Radio sees a large quarterly hours increase and JACK fm Oxfordshire gains its highest ever reach, hours and share.
JACK fm Bristol is also continuing to report a higher audience than it ever did as Original 106 – with a steady 19% reach compared to 5% two years ago, and Island FM 104.7 now has an impressive 54% reach – its best in almost 10 years.

In Wales, Nation Radio posts one million listening hours for the first time – an increase of 63% quarter on quarter, and in Scotland Original 106 has its biggest reach yet.

Along the South, Fire Radio also has it’s biggest audience in four years – with 9.3 average hours (it was 5.6 last year) and 43,000 listeners. And in the Midlands we see that Beacon records its highest figures in four years with over a quarter of a million listeners each week.

At UKRD, Sun FM in Sunderland is enjoying a 31% reach – its highest in a decade – and Pirate FM in Cornwall is also enjoying a higher audience than of late, now with 34% reach.

Sadly it isn’t all good news as re-launched East Midlands regional Gem 106 has lost audience and hours again, whilst Kestrel FM Haslemere (formerly Delta FM) is down to its lowest audience in over five years. BRMB is also down, now at its lowest hours ever and down 57,000 listeners.

....commercial group news

Bauer
Key 103 and Clyde 1 have helped increase Bauer’s national reach to nine million listeners, and is now commercially number one in 20 of its 21 markets.
In London, Magic slips to third place behind Capital and sister station Heart whilst Kiss continues to build audience at breakfast with 1.5 million listeners tuning in to ‘Rickie, Melvin & Charlie in the Morning’ across the network.
Key 103 in Manchester has recorded its highest reach since 2006, staying ahead of Capital Manchester (502k) in terms of listeners, with 570,000 people tuning in each week.

Meanwhile, Bauer Radio Scotland delivers an overall weekly audience of 1.7 million listeners, reaching 42% of the available adult listening audience.
Hallam FM’s reach is up 4.3% and hours up 31.6% year on year, and 97.4 Cool FM’s reach is up 15.7% and hours up 26.1% since Q3 2010 – its best results ever.

Overall Magic UK was down 5.6% on the previous quarter and 3.8% year-on-year to 3.83 million. And there were double-digit year-on-year declines for NME Radio, along with three Bauer stations, The Hits, Smash Hits and Q. Jazz FM was down 14.2% on the previous quarter but up 12.4% compared with the same period in 2010 to 508,000, while Planet Rock was down marginally on the previous three months but up 7.3% year-on-year to 840,000.

Graham Bryce, Managing Director Bauer Radio Scotland, said: “In the central belt, where audience choice is at its greatest, both FM stations have more listeners, listening longer. Our flagship station Clyde 1 has increased listening hours by a fantastic 15.5% and has added 41,000 weekly listeners since this time last year. Sister station Forth 1 has clocked up an additional 45,000 listeners since this time last year. This means Radio Clyde & Radio Forth together reach well over 1million people each week, and their combined audiences spend over 11.1 million hours each week tuned in.”

UTV
TalkSport slipped back on the previous quarter but was up 5.8% year-on-year to 3.13 million (of which 2.5m are men) and hit its highest ever reach for the 3-month summer period.
In London, however, talkSPORT lost 15% of its audience over the past year with the station down to 717,000 listeners in the capital (was 844,000 in Q3/10).

Nationally, Richard Keys and Andy Gray’s weekday midmorning show has reached a record audience for the timeslot, with an increase of 8.3% compared with Q2/11. Alan Brazil’s Sports Breakfast has gained 4.3% reach year on year and has 1.347 million listeners, although this is down from the 1.364 last quarter.

Moz Dee, Programme Director for talkSPORT, said: “I’m delighted that we’ve grown the audience year on year in what is always a difficult quarter for sports broadcasters. Quality sports journalism and continued investment in rights and talent are hitting the right note with existing and new listeners. While these figures only reflect the first few matches of our live and exclusive Rugby World Cup coverage, they seem very promising indeed.”

Meanwhile, UTV’s group of 14 local radio stations in the UK have collectively increased audience both on the quarter and the year. Reach for the group is now at 1.516m, with hours of 13.6m and a market share of 10.6%.

Around the group, The Wave in Swansea is at its highest reach (151,000) since 2004 and now bigger than Radio 1 in its TSA on both reach and hours. Signal Radio has recorded the highest FM and AM combined reach since 2003, with Signal 1 posting an 8-year high of 284,000 listeners a week. Warrington’s Wire FM has grown its hours 76% over the last 12 months to 61,000.

Calum Macaulay, Director of Local Radio for the group said: “These are a great set of numbers with the growth reflecting the success of our Proud to Be Local positioning and our clear programme strategy to broadcast live local sport alongside great music. In the 2011/2012 season we will broadcast over 228 hours of live Premier League football from Swansea City, Stoke City, Bolton Wanderers and Wigan Athletic, and next year we will broadcast live commentary from over 90 Super League matches in rugby league’s heartland on Wish FM and Wire FM.”
UTV has recently appointed former GMG Head of Music and programmer Terry Underhill as its Group Programme Director for its ILR stations. Underhill takes up his new position on November 7th. Macaulay added: “We are looking forward to Terry joining us and building on the fantastic work that Francis Currie has done to drive the group forward. Francis will continue to work with Terry and myself in a consultative capacity.”

Global
Global Radio's Classic FM was down, 6.1% on the previous quarter and 5.1% year-on-year to 5.39 million. The company's quasi-national Heart network was also down, falling 4.2% year-on-year to 7.65 million and an audience of over 2m in London .

However there was better news at the Capital network of stations, up 2.3% on the previous quarter to 7.03 million. Capital toppled Magic 105.4 from the top spot in the London commercial market. Capital had an average weekly reach of 2.18 million in the third quarter of 2011, up 4.9% on the previous quarter. The Capital Network exceeds seven million weekly listeners for the first time, an increase of 157,000 listeners in comparison to last quarter.

London talk station LBC 97.3 saw a dip in listeners to 841,000 down 9.4% year on year and double-digital falls at Xfm and Absolute Radio in the capital.
Xfm was down 19.4% year on year to 435,000, the main Absolute Radio FM/AM station slipped back, down 3% year on year to an average weekly audience of 1.6 million while Absolute Radio's total London audience fell 15.4% year on year to 771,000.
The broadcaster will launch two new decade-themed stations in November - Absolute Radio 70s and Absolute Radio 60s.
Excellent movement for Choice FM, up 17.1% year on year to 562,000 adding over 100,000 listeners since this time three months ago

Ashley Tabor, Founder & Executive President said: “It’s a good day for Global – Capital at number 1 in London, our Capital Network breaking through the 7m listener barrier and the Heart Networks’ significant increase in hours. Today’s figures show our strategy of national brands delivered locally is working very well for listeners and customers alike.”

Richard Park, Director of Broadcasting at Global Radio said: “It’s great to see cities and regions across the UK enjoying the output of the Heart and Capital networks, and to be number 1 and 2 in London is a fantastic achievement.”
GMG
Smooth Radio now has a bigger reach across the UK than national UTV station talkSPORT with 3.328m weekly listeners. The station’s reach is up 9% (275,000 listeners) in the last year, while sister network Real Radio has also posted a record audience size.
Total hours at Smooth – which has five regional FM licences in England and a local one in Scotland as well as appearing on the Digital One DAB multiplex – are up 3.5m in a year to 27.052m which its national share of the audience is 2.5%.

In London, the station posted a 25% increase quarter on quarter to 612,000 – an audience in the capital that’s now bigger than both XFM and Choice. Simon Bates’ breakfast show in London has seen its audience rise to 249,000 in Q3/11 (up from 222,000 last year and 170,000 last quarter) – putting the show ahead of XFM, Gold and BBC London.
Overall, GMG Radio’s audience size is up 9.5% in a year to 5.685m, with just under 50 million listening hours also a record for the group.
Combined reach for the Real Radio stations – which cover Wales, Scotland, Yorkshire, the North West and North East – is up 10% from Q3/10 to 2.607m

In Yorkshire, there’s a five-year high for both reach (371,000) and total hours (3.56m). In the North West, Real posts its highest reach (587,000) since the station re-branded from Century two years ago. And in the North East, Real is up 22k year on year to 323,000, although this is a drop from last quarter’s post-rebrand high of 369k.

In Wales, after debuting at a combined nationwide reach of 471,000 last quarter, Real has added listeners in both the South and the North regions to give a new reach of 495,000 – which GMG point out is higher than BBC Radio Wales’ audience of 479,000.

In Scotland the Real brand has lost 22k this quarter to post a new reach of 626,000. That compares with a weekly audience of 665,000 a year ago.
Both former Rock Radio stations – in Manchester and Glasgow – which have now been rebranded to Real Radio XS saw year-on-year increases in reach but slight drops for this quarter compared with Q2.

GMG Radio Chief Executive Stuart Taylor said: “With the ever increasing pull on people’s time I’m really pleased that a record number are choosing to tune into both Smooth and Real. The GMG Radio stations are now attracting more listening time than ever before. Smooth’s transformation to a national station has proven a huge success and I have no doubt there is more growth to come.”
Absolute
Absolute 80s in fashion as station tops 1 million listeners. The 80’s themed station has become the UK's top digital-only radio service, overtaking Planet Rock, Smash Hits Radio and The Hits. Featuring the Eurythmics, Duran Duran and Queen, Absolute 80s' playlist is not necessarily what you would call groundbreaking, however the Absolute Radio spin-off station is now the UK's most popular commercial digital-only service, breaking through the one million barrier for the first time with an average weekly reach up 80% in the last 12 months to 1.02 million listeners.
Its sister digital stations did less well. Absolute Radio 90s fell back 15% on the previous quarter – but nearly double year-on-year – to 366,000, while Absolute Radio 00s fell to just 120,000 from 200,000 in the previous three months.

With 2.841m weekly listeners, the total Absoute Radio Network has held its 9-year high for reach. The main Absolute Radio station’s audience is down 50,000 listeners (3%) across the year from 1.654m to 1.604m. 69% of Absolute’s total listening is now done on digital platforms – up from 62%.

The group says hours are up 11% year on year but took a ‘seasonal dip’ of 16.5% this quarter because of the lack of Premier League football coverage in the summer months.

Chief Operating Officer Clive Dickens said: “This is a steady RAJAR performance for the brand – Absolute Radio and Absolute 80s are both now top ten commercial radio stations in the UK and The Absolute Radio Network has held its reach, after significant growth last quarter.”

....BBC Regions

BBC local radio stations, which are facing big cuts in the BBC's £700m cost-saving plan, added more than a quarter of a million listeners during the three months to 18 September. Around 50 MPs used a Westminster debate on Wednesday to criticise the BBC local radio cuts as unfair, unjustified and a "travesty" for listeners. Many stations are facing cuts of 20%.
The 40 local stations in England had a combined weekly reach of 7.25 million in the third quarter of this year, according to official Rajar figures published on Thursday.
Collectively they were 288,000 listeners up on the same period in 2010, although the quarter-on-quarter rise of 26,000 was rather more modest.

BBC Radio Stoke up 46% to 206k, Leicester up 22% to 167k and Coventry & Warwickshire up 29% to 88k were among the risers.
Further good news for BBC Devon up 10% to 259k, BBC 3Counties up 24% to 182k, BBC WM up 26% to 239k, BBC Tees up 28% to 109k and BBC Scotland up 6.5% to 953k
Bad news for BBC Radio London 94.9 which is facing the toughest cuts and a £1m reduction in its budget, fell back in the competitive London market dropping 15.4% year on year to 474,000 listeners a week.

David Holdsworth, Controller of BBC English Regions, said: “BBC Local Radio is sustaining growth with figures of well over 7 million listeners for the last four quarters. Our investment in political reporting and the strength of our journalism – through programmes such as those that hold local politicians and others to account – mean that every week 7, 250,000 listeners are getting the local news, engagement and interaction that they want from their local stations.”

Achieving National Broadcast Coverage

nospam@example.com (Russell Goldsmith) — Sun, 09 Oct 2011 12:17:28 +0100

Each Wednesday at markettiers4dc, we run an internal 'Lunch & Learn' session where one of the teams shares with the rest of us some key industry knowledge, recent successful case studies, or simply tips on how best to do our job of broadcast communications!

This week, our media liaison team presented an excellent session on how best to achieve National Radio coverage for our clients. Given they have already delivered close to 600 items of national coverage in 2011, they probably know what they're talking about! And as we believe knowledge should be free and shared, we wanted to provide you with their slides too.

The presentation includes information about the opportunities on:

Radio 4 - including Farming Today, Today Programme, World at One, PM, Woman's Hour, and You and Yours
5Live - including the Morning Report, 5Live Breakfast, Derbyshire, Fogarty and Bacon
Radio2 - including Evans, Vine and Mayo
Radio1 - Moyles, Fearne, James and Mills including studio cams - Our campaign with Elmo was billed as Greg James' best guest ever - you can see it on webcam at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NBiEMPbbERU - Also information on Newsbeat
Sky News Radio - including type of stories and syndication
Working with GNS
Business and the BBC

To request a copy of the slides, simply email info@markettiers4dc.com with your name and company details and if you would also like us to come and present them to your team as a one hour workhsop, then just get in touch to book at a cost of £50/attendee - all proceeds go to our JustGiving page to raise money for Teenage Cancer Trust - http://www.justgiving.com/markettiers4dc2011

Chinwag Insight: Facebook Marketing

nospam@example.com (Russell Goldsmith) — Fri, 23 Sep 2011 12:35:25 +0100

Wed 5th Oct, 10-4pm, Channel 4, London (Workshop)

Thu 6th Oct, 9-6pm, Covent Garden London (Conference)

We're happy to plug an event organised by our friends at Chinwag as they have offered our clients and readers of our blog a £100 discount - see below

This new conference from the organisers of Social Media Week London, comes to London on 5th and 6th Oct 2011. Delving deep into all aspects of Facebook Marketing, from developing an effective strategy through to tactics that work (and don't), looking at advertising, games, mobile, apps, engagement, metrics and a glance into the future.

Hear from Facebook and brands including Dell, Channel 4 with case studies, expert advice and the wisdom of experience from leading agencies 1000heads, W+K London, SocialOptic and “Me and My Web Shadow” author Antony Mayfield. With more top brands still under wraps this is one conference you don't want to miss out on.

For those in need of some hands-on practical experience, there’s the Facebook Marketing: Bootcamp kindly hosted at Channel 4’s offices in London. The day led by Lauren Fisher of social media experts, Simply Zesty the day will provide an in-depth tour of the tools and techniques to get you started.

Early bird conference tickets start from only £199, so don't hang around to get yours!

Discount code: markettiers4dc

http://chinwag.com/insight/facebook

markettiers4dc unites nations for the UN Decade on Biodiversity

nospam@example.com (Russell Goldsmith) — Fri, 23 Sep 2011 11:33:16 +0100

When the United Nations asked markettiers4dc to provide broadcast support for its international Decade on Biodiversity, the agency brought the global environmental movement together by hosting a live, interactive web TV show direct from New York's Manhattan on Tuesday 20th September.

By inviting viewers to email questions to two senior UN figures about its plans to curb biodiversity loss, interest in the show surpassed expectations among online environmental and ecological communities, as well as international news services and educational establishments.

Among the 28 outlets and organisations providing links or streaming the programme on their sites were the BBC, The Independent, The Huffington Post, Oxfam, WWF, Friends of the Earth, ZSL London Zoo, a host of specialist biodiversity sites and, representing academia on both sides of the pond, Oxford and Yale universities.

The Twitter interest was phenomenal with tweets generated from locations including the US, Australia, Japan, France and Canada and a tweet reach of 361,944 followers. The 30 minute show included a video message of support from actor and United Nations Goodwill Ambassador for Biodiversity, Edward Norton.

Green Schools Revolution Wakes The Nation

nospam@example.com (Russell Goldsmith) — Fri, 23 Sep 2011 12:03:05 +0100

This week the Co-operative launched their Green Schools Revolution designed to bring practical environmental studies to the fore across UK schools. With over 2500 schools already signed up, markettiers4dc were tasked with generating maximum broadcast exposure for the programme, set up as part of The Co-operative's £30 million Inspiring Young People campaign.

With access to campaign spokesperson & sustainability ambassador, farmer Jimmy Doherty, we created compelling research headlines to underpin the campaign messaging and turned a Surrey school's head-teacher's office into a radio studio for the day. Nationwide coverage was achieved with highlights including a live interview and trails from the school on ITV’s Daybreak and high impact regional BBC radio features including BBC Cumbria, BBC Suffolk and BBC South West.

Working closely with the brand, markettiers4dc were also able to secure filming opportunities at smaller events at schools across the country to generate local evening news coverage across the BBC and ITV network.

The campaign was successful in generating not only high-profile coverage but a real sense of buzz around the launch, with Jimmy on hand in the classroom to deliver a Green Schools Revolution lesson in real time, providing engaging opportunities for broadcast and print media to tell a very visual story.

Full Throttle

nospam@example.com (Russell Goldsmith) — Fri, 23 Sep 2011 11:57:45 +0100

August 2011 saw a landmark win for markettiers4dc when Nissan International, the European subsidiary of global giant Nissan Motor Co Ltd appointed the agency to handle broadcast services on a number of high profile projects and events across Europe, Africa, Middle East and India.

The work, on a preferred supplier basis, began almost immediately, focused around behind the scenes video production for Japan’s second biggest car company and creating and capturing content around key industry announcements from the Frankfurt International Motor Show. Forthcoming projects are expected to include product launches, road testing and live events as well as an emphasis on the Zero Emission segment.

The brand, which employs 150,000 globally and is a major employer in the North East of England, appointed Markettiers4dc following a competitive pitch. “They demonstrated strategic brand insight and creativity as well as a proven international broadcast expertise” according to Fernando Menezes, General Manager, Corporate Communications for Europe, Africa, Middle East and India.

The win builds on the agencies growing reputation in the automotive sector including project work for Nissan Motor (GB) Ltd.

RAJAR DATA RELEASE – QUARTER 2, 2011

nospam@example.com (Howard Kosky) — Thu, 04 Aug 2011 07:41:10 +0100

The following information has been taken directly from RAJAR's press release this morning

Number tuning in to radio reaches new high

91.7% of UK population tune in to radio every week – new high*
Total radio listening hours reach 1,076 million per week
Listening via a digital receiver reaches 26.9% of all radio listening
Access to a DAB receiver up 11.1% year on year to 20.2 million adults
7.5 million (14.4%) of adults listen via a digitally enabled TV, up 11% year on year
Internet listening hours up by 15.4% year on year
Mobile phone listening up 16.1% year on year

The number of people listening to radio reached a new high in Q2, 2011, as 47.6 million adults or 91.7% of the population (15+) tuned in to their favourite stations each week†, it was announced today by RAJAR Limited (Radio Joint Audience Research). This figure is up by over three-quarters of a million listeners (845,000 listeners) in comparison with the same period in 2010 and exceeds the previous high of 47.3 million last quarter (Q1, 2011). The total number of radio listening hours has also increased year on year to 1,076 million hours per week or 22.6 hours per listener (c.f. 1,030 million hours in Q2, 2010 and 1,058 million hours in Q1, 2011).

Radio listening via digital platforms
Listening to radio via a digital platform in terms of weekly reach† has increased by 10.7% year on year, with 22.1 million people now tuning in to radio via a digitally enabled receiver (DAB, DTV, internet) each week (up from 20 million in Q2, 2010).

This increase is reflected in the digital listening hours for Q2, 2011 which are up 14.3%, from 253 million hours in Q2, 2010 to 289 million hours this quarter. DAB radio continues to retain its position as the most popular device when it comes to listening to digital radio, accounting for 63.8% of all digital hours, however listening via DTV (digital television) and internet have both continued to rise year on year, (hours up by 23.7% and 15.4% respectively) albeit from a smaller base.

DAB hours are 185 million (162m in Q2, 2010 – up 13.6%)
DTV hours are 52 million (42m in Q2, 2010 – up 23.7%)
Internet hours are 34 million (30m in Q2, 2010 – up 15.4%)

The share of radio listening via a digital platform accounts for more than one quarter of all radio listening increasing from 24.6% in Q2, 2010 to 26.9% in Q2, 2011, while remaining relatively stable quarter on quarter (c.f. 26.5% in Q1, 2011). DAB listening increased its share from 15.8% in Q2, 2010 to 17.2% in Q2, 2011, while the share of DTV listening increased from 4.1% in Q2, 2010 to reach 4.8% this quarter; and internet listening, which broke the 3% barrier for the first time in Q4, 2010, currently stands at 3.2% for Q2, 2011.

This is the highest weekly reach recorded since records began in 1992, irrespective of methodological changes in 1999 and 2007.
† Weekly reach is the number of people (adults 15+) in the UK who listened to a radio station for at least five minutes in the course
of an average week during the quarter.

Access to a DAB receiver
Access to a DAB receiver is up 11.1% year on year and is almost three times the level of five years ago. In Q2, 2011 almost two in five of the population (38.9%), or 20.2 million adults (aged 15+) claimed to live in a household which has a DAB set (c.f. 18.2 million in Q2, 2010 and 7.6 million in Q2, 2006).

Radio listening via mobile phone
Radio listening via mobile phone has increased by 16.1% year on year with 14.5% of adults aged 15+ in Q2, 2011 saying they have listened in this way (c.f. 12.5% in Q2, 2010). In the 25+ demographic 11.4% say they have listened to the radio via their mobile phone, up from 9.2% in Q2, 2010. In the 15-24 demographic nearly a third or 31% of those surveyed now claim to have listened to the radio in this way with 14.8% stating they listen at least once a week and 3.3% stating they listen every day.

Detailed data and individual radio station data, for both BBC and Commercial Radio stations, are available on the RAJAR web site at www.rajar.co.uk from 00.01hrs, Thursday August 4, 2011.

new product placement rules on British TV

nospam@example.com (Howard Kosky) — Mon, 28 Feb 2011 09:41:00 +0000

So today sees the start of the new product placement rules on British TV.

I can’t help but wonder what impact this will really have for the TV landscape and communications professionals.

Some reports suggest as much as up to 5% of total TV revenue will come via this route, but at the lower end some are predicting £35m per year . . . so is it really worth it . . . and what impact will it have on the communications and editorial sectors that focus on delivering the subliminal messaging of brand placement.

So as of today lets all be looking out for the P sign (above) at the start of a programme, which if based on current information would suggest only a few programmes as yet, and means that for now the only reference I’m going to see for a P will be if I’m watching reports of years gone by from decade of Bob Holness and Blockbusters and ‘Can I have a P please Bob’

As a broadcast evangelist it is my job to digest all information and understand it, and as such share it also so if you have any queries or want some information on how it could work or impact on you and your brand please feel free to email me at TVplacement@markettiers4dc.com

Take The (You) Tube to reach your Audience

nospam@example.com (Russell Goldsmith) — Sun, 27 Feb 2011 20:38:04 +0000

It’s incredible to think that you only have to go back to the start of 2005 to find a world without YouTube, yet now, according to Bruce Daisley, the company’s Head of Sales in the UK, 24 hours of video is uploaded to the site every minute.

That’s quite a bit to watch! In fact, 42% of all time spent online includes exposure to online videos with 6.65bn videos having been viewed in September 2010 by 35.1m viewers in the UK spending over 561m hours watching them (comScore). And if you think that’s a lot, Cisco say that by 2013, 90% of internet bandwidth will be video.

We can therefore take it as read that as a brand, to communicate with your audience, you will need to either advertise around video content, or produce it yourselves – and if you know anything about markettiers4dc, you’ll know which of those two camps we sit in (that’s the one that says produce your own by the way!).

Now, sometimes (actually, quite often), when it comes to broadcast PR & marketing, we do something at markettiers4dc that no one else has done before and so we just have to shout about it. So is the case with the latest addition to our armoury in terms of ways to engage with your audience through YouTube, by creating a truly interactive retail channel for your brand.

OK, we’re not exactly the first to create a custom retail channel on YouTube – successful examples from 2010 include French Connection and Waitrose. However, what we’ve managed to achieve, by working with the team at Google, is to integrate our LinkTo(TM) technology that has proved successful in increasing average shopping baskets for brands such as Jaeger, into the YouTube environment. We will be launching this in the next few months for Start Rite Shoes.

Whereas the likes of French Connection have to work with the limitations of YouTube’s annotations, we can integrate all the functionality of LinkTo into the channel that no one else has currently done.

What does this mean exactly? Well, we can track any product as it moves across the video, making it interactive so that a viewer can click on it for more information, pausing the video, so if interested, can then add it into their shopping basket on your ecommerce site, before returning to the video to carry on viewing and hopefully shopping for more items. The product data that they see when they click on the item can be called in live from an RSS feed, so if you are running promotions, the prices can be updated automatically. Jaeger, whose catwalk videos we make interactive on their website, have seen average shopping baskets increase by over 300% from people shopping through the LinkTo video, so we know it works!

We can also integrate data collection forms into the interactive hot spots, so if you want to use the video to build a mailing list, we can help do that too. Basically, there isn’t much we can’t do, so challenge us and send a brief to russ@markettiers4dc.com.

So great! You’ve decided to produce some video content, let’s assume the most engaging, exciting, funny, informative video on your chosen topic. You’ve uploaded it to YouTube, perhaps in your retail channel. The question is how do you get anyone to watch it? Well that’s where we recommend you use every network available to you on our Tube map analogy (below).

Broadcast, online and social media are living breathing interconnecting networks of channels that can be taken advantage of to take your message to your audience, or drive your audience to you.

Long gone are the days when your broadcast strategy should be all about a ‘radio day’ to raise awareness of your campaign – in fact, it never should have been just that – but particularly now if you have video collateral that you want people to see.

The good news is that any one of our tube lines will enable you to engage with your audience, but just imagine if you had the time and budget to use all of them when relevant. Integrating your broadcast and social media activity is when you will get the best return on your investment by driving advocacy through the many seamless connections available to reach your audience.

Be Cutting Edge and not just cutting costs with your Internal Communications in this Age of Austerity

nospam@example.com () — Fri, 18 Feb 2011 07:34:43 +0000

With warnings of a double dip recession, VAT rises, more government cuts, and a fall in GDP, it’s no wonder budgets are being squeezed throughout many organisations. Hence, now more than ever, how a company communicates with its employees, shareholders and members could determine its success or failure.

Sadly, many businesses have historically based themselves on concentrating purely on maximising efficiencies which have arguably dehumanised the actual management of those key stakeholders. Yet even if you are thriving in your sector, your internal communications can make all the difference to those people who work for you who can’t avoid all the negative news in the media that could raise concerns about their own positions.

It’s key for employers to be honest and transparent, but sometimes, it can be hard to encourage the same in return from the employees. Building advocacy from staff is a key attribute to building success from within, but how do you go about getting them to share their opinions (with management) to enable you to gain enough insight to build an understanding of what they are thinking, and then communicate back to them your approach to moving the business forward in a way that will engage and motivate them.

President Obama, in his State of the Union address, talked of the US as “a nation of Google and Facebook” but we are no different in the UK when it comes to the explosion of social media and interactivity. As a nation, we love to share our opinions, whether it’s commenting on a Facebook wall, tweeting, or voting for our favourite Jungle celebrity, Ice Dancer or wannabe pop stars. Those same people, who like to make their opinions heard outside the workplace, will no doubt be encouraged if they can do the same inside too, whether that is publicly or anonymously.

We are seeing a significant shift in the way employees like to be communicated with and simply sending out a copy of the company newsletter and annual survey that gets sent with it simply will not cut it when we are used to getting our information instantly and being able to share our thoughts on it immediately.

And what of those organisations based across multiple locations or across a number of territories? Workforces have become more dispersed geographically and opportunities to bring them together tend to be limited, timely and costly.

With all this doom and gloom, you’d be surprised if we didn’t have some good news for you, and so
here it is!

Our live and interactive WebTV solution, featured in numerous stories in the latest issue of Onward, can also be used to deliver successful UK and global internal communications campaigns, which we have achieved for brands such as Marks & Spencer and Pernod Ricard. However, we have now further enhanced that solution by adding a live research capability which means that the company survey and internal insight can now be delivered and measured in a truly interactive and engaging social media environment.

To discuss how we can enhance your internal communications or for information on our new CommSight offering from Opinion Matters, please contact Karen Brooks on 020 7253 8888.

The eighth wonder of the world - Jordan Tourism

nospam@example.com () — Thu, 17 Feb 2011 12:03:24 +0000

With destinations like Dubai becoming perhaps a little passé in the eyes of some seasoned travellers, Jordan Tourism wanted to capitalise on the UK consumer’s desire to experience something new and captivating for their next holiday. The core aim was to demonstrate how desirable, accessible and exciting a Jordan holiday is and raise awareness of the quality and variety of holidays available – from luxurious, to intrepid, to historical, to family and in the process, position Jordan as the ‘eighth wonder of the World’.

Sound Creative, part of the markettiers4dc group of companies delivered an integrated, cross-platform, broadcast campaign, fronted by famous Jordanian export and TV favourite Nadia Sawalha. As one of the famous Sawalha acting family, Nadia has starred in the likes of Eastenders, is a regular on Loose Women and even won Celebrity Masterchef.

As well as her obvious family credentials enabling her to act as an authority on promoting Jordan – it
was Nadia’s sultry and unmistakeable tones that made her the perfect choice to voice a series
of ‘Postcards from Jordan’ radio programming features in which she enthused, evangelised and
inspired the audience to consider one of the many types of holiday available in Jordan. Each feature
focused on a different style of holiday available.

The features formed the central element of the branded content at the heart of a month long partnership with Smooth Radio London and Smooth Radio Northwest. Sound selected the Smooth
Radio stations owing to their programming style fitting the messaging tone, their proximity to major
airports carrying flights to Jordan and because of their highly relevant ABC1, travel-loving audience.

The series of Nadia’s features were ‘wrapped’ with Smooth Radio and Jordan Tourism co-branding
to leverage powerful station endorsement and to ensure standout from commercial messaging.

To maximise the reach amongst Smooth Radio listeners and to ensure they understood the core
message of breadth of holidays available, the features were broadcast with high frequency,
across all key shows over a sustained period of 4 weeks, taking the activity beyond a traditional
radio promotion execution.

Each features’ out-tag also contained the callto-action, driving the listener online to further
engage with key destination information and to enter a competition for a chance to win one of two
all-expenses paid trips to Jordan. With the entry point being housed online, we were able to deliver
brand engagement visibility to the client and also provide valuable data capture for future Jordan
Tourism marketing.

The advertorial and competition was promoted in the Smooth Radio newsletter which went out to
over 46,000 subscribed listeners.

Alongside the partnership with Smooth Radio, Sound supported the campaign with broadcast
PR tactics to deliver editorial coverage for Jordan Tourism across highly relevant online media. We
produced a live, interactive WebTV show featuring a panel of Jordan experts - Matthew Teller, travel
writer and author of Rough Guide to Jordan and David Symes from Jordan Tourist Board. Matthew
and David were steered by our presenter throughout the live show, discussing the wonders of a
Jordanian trip and answering both pre-registered and live online user questions.

The show was pre-promoted across a number of travel related sites and portals, where we
encouraged registration of questions and created the appointment to view live. The show itself
was simulcast live across the sites and went on to become on-demand content, extending the
campaign reach.

The on-demand version of the WebTV show was also utilised as further content for the Smooth
Radio partnership, being placed within the online advertorial alongside the competition, complementing the on-air activity.

Motoring Onward

nospam@example.com () — Wed, 16 Feb 2011 09:52:38 +0000

2010 was a fascinating year for the UK motor industry, with the end of the Government scrappage sales scheme, a major electric vehicle (EV) production announcement and some startling sales figures for brands at either end of the car market. Markettiers4dc helped to tell just some of these compelling stories through its unrivalled broadcast relationships and expertise.

UK becomes electric car epicentre
markettiers4dc were in the driving seat for the biggest automotive announcement of 2010 as Nissan announced it would be producing the world’s first affordable mass produced zero emission car - the LEAF - at their acclaimed Sunderland plant.

The formal announcement from Government & Nissan’s Global VP, Andy Palmer placed the UK and the North East region at the heart of the electric vehicle revolution signaling one of the biggest landmarks in British motoring history.

With just days separating the project green light and the public announcement, markettiers4dc immediately undertook an audit of existing B-Roll, repackaging it to ensure all broadcasters could showcase the LEAF in its entirety, accentuating functionality and ‘normality’ to dispel commonly held ideas of what electric cars look like. Three key Nissan executives were strategically placed around the UK (accompanied by their own markettiers4dc team and crew) to maximise all filming & coverage opportunities

The announcement and broadcast coverage thereof dominated the news agenda throughout the day despite other major government backed motoring announcements airing the same day. Nissan and the new LEAF garnered some of the strongest brand-owned automotive coverage seen in recent years with highlights including reports from Sky News, BBC One (1 o’clock News, 6 o’clock News), ITV Evening News featuring interviews beside the production line at Sunderland, down the line interviews to BBC Breakfast, GMTV, BBC World News, ITN, continuous rolling bulletins and B-Roll on all key 24 hour news channels plus a combined radio audience just shy of 40m. Working collaboratively with a forward-thinking client on a landmark story, markettiers4dc and Nissan ensured very few households missed the good news that Britain would be leading the electric car revolution into 2011 and beyond.

Rolls-Royce Motor Cars Communicates Sales Success Story
Rolls-Royce Motor Cars, the pinnacle luxury brand, entrusted markettiers4dc with handling the global TV and radio coverage for their Annual Results announcement on Monday 10th January 2011.

Sales of the brand had more than doubled from the previous year, setting a new record despite a widespread sales slump among other companies in the automotive sector.

We set up 13 top-tier broadcast interviews for Chief Executive, Torsten Müller-Ötvös, who based himself at our London studios for much of the day where he also undertook several press interviews.

The day was the culmination of a comprehensive four-week media relations exercise which saw us brief all the key global business broadcasters with tailored storylines and provide them with B-Roll of the Rolls-Royce Phantom and Ghost models on the road and on the company’s Goodwood production line.

As part of our outreach we ensured the CEO was live on CNN’s World Business Today, CNBC Europe, Sky News’ Jeff Randall Live and BBC World TV’s World Business Report, while he did down the line interviews from markettiers4dc’s own TV studio into Bloomberg TV’s On The Move, the 24-hour German news and business news channel NTV, BBC TV News and City 7 TV in Dubai’s
Inside Business.

We also filmed at Rolls-Royce’s Mayfair dealership with China’s CCTV and leading German station ZDF, while Reuters filmed a package with a Phantom which they subsequently fed to all their 400 TV station clients worldwide plus online and print
news subscribers.

The CEO’s four radio interviews were with Radio 4’s Today programme, Radio 5’s Wake Up To Money, BBC World Service Radio’s World Business News and BBC Scotland’s business news.

Meanwhile we set up ITV News’ China Correspondent, Angus Walker, to film at Rolls-Royce’s Beijing dealership and ITV Meridian, invited to film at Goodwood, ran the story in their main evening and late night news programmes.

We knew this was a big story,” commented Nigel Wonnacott product PR manager Rolls-Royce Motor Cars, “And we needed an agency to reflect that with coverage in all regions in which Rolls-Royce is represented. Markettiers4dc made that happen. We were delighted with the results.”

2010 was a fascinating year for the UK motor industry, with the end of the Government scrappage sales scheme, a major electric vehicle (EV) production announcement and some startling sales figures for brands at either end of the car market. Markettiers4dc helped to tell just some of these compelling stories through its unrivalled broadcast relationships and expertise.

The Importance of Putting Convergence Into Practice in 2011

nospam@example.com () — Mon, 14 Feb 2011 09:12:21 +0000

If you think back to a campaign you ran five years ago, we’d wager the process of delivery would bear only a passing resemblance to those of 2010, let alone the campaigns you’re planning for 2011.

Of course the skill and expertise used to deliver your campaigns is a constant, but the timings, tactics and platforms which you have adopted to achieve your success (or your clients) will have evolved significantly.

The same is true of the broadcast element of your campaign – we firmly believe that the days of including a ‘radio day’ as a bolt on at the end of the process are changing.

Thankfully the emphasis has shifted much more onto identifying where audiences are and communicating with them accordingly. Which means that from our perspective your broadcast event should not only have regional BBCs sitting alongside traditional TV, but also video interviews with major newspapers online also channelled through social media.

Creating packages for audiences online can obviously be very powerful, offering you the chance to target a core audience, in a way that is just not achievable in other media. There is no doubt that the number of opportunities to speak directly to your audience is increasing, so rather than marginalising online as just text and image the focus needs to be on optimising levels of engagement.

Video particularly is widely supported via social media, but how many of you currently look to Facebook as you would the Sun online to carry the video content you’ve produced? After Google, Facebook is the now the leading source of video referrals, followed closely by Twitter. Why is this important? Well the Facebook population is vast and if the currency it uses shifts towards video - can you afford not to consider them within your broadcast strategy?

Radio of course still has a crucial role to play – but as 2011 unfolds we believe that it should be considered part of the broadcast mix and not a standalone route to audience.

There is no doubt the radio landscape has experienced a tumultuous few years with much in the way of consolidation. Over the last four years the number of stations across the UK has reduced and regional news teams for stations such as Heart are now having to cover a much bigger TSA whilst
ensuring the news they deliver is still locally sympathetic.

Interestingly, the reduction in station numbers has not diminished the loyalty of listeners across the UK. According to the latest RAJAR statistics, nine in 10 people across the UK listen to the radio every week, an increase of one million on the previous 12 months. Listening via digital platforms also continues to grow – indeed over 20 million of us listen to the radio digitally, an increase of 16% on the previous year.

So to make the most out of broadcast schedules in 2011, flexibility will become the watch words. A case in point is Sky News Radio, (who syndicates to over 200 local radio stations across the UK), as more often than not they prefer to capture their content the afternoon before the story is released from its embargo. Access to spokespeople is clearly crucial to ensure that opportunities are maximised and this needs to be pinned down, in the case of celebrities, during contract negotiations.

In addition broadcast opportunities don’t solely exist between the times of 8am-2pm. With pressure on resources and news and feature teams more stretched, if spokespeople can be flexible with their time and accommodate live evening and late night show opportunities relevant to end audience, then
end coverage will only be more impressive and targeted. Programming for travel and gardening for example will tend to fall on the weekend – so only setting aside two hours of spokesperson time on a Tuesday morning is not going to necessarily deliver your objectives.

So with much to consider as we enter the brave new world of 2011, the recognition that broadcast is actually increasingly all encompassing should translate into a new approach to your broadcast planning.

Long live the broadcast day.

Communicating Face to Facebook with your customers

nospam@example.com (Russell Goldsmith) — Fri, 11 Feb 2011 17:35:51 +0000

With 500m active users, a Golden Globe winning movie and a valuation of over $50bn, we thought perhaps Onward could afford to dedicate a little bit of editorial to Facebook.

Whether you think we’ve seen this all before with the likes of Friends Reunited, Bebo, MySpace and the many social networks that have been the darlings of the market and media in the past, one thing that is very evident with Facebook, in terms of brand communication, is that it delivers. And at markettiers4dc we’ve experienced the benefits first hand.

Last year we achieved a number of firsts within Facebook that really excited both us and our clients; and this year we’ll be pushing further ahead with how we integrate our broadcast campaigns into this important communications environment.

In 2010 we broadcast a live and interactive whisky tasting show via satellite from Jerez in Spain into our client’s Facebook fan page which was viewed live and subsequently on demand by tens of thousands of users all over the world.

We were also appointed by Hill & Knowlton to help leverage Castrol’s sponsorship of the 2010 FIFA World Cup. A live interactive WebTV show was produced for their Facebook fan page, giving football fans the chance to put their questions to brand ambassadors Alan Shearer and Ronald Koeman, as well as view a selection of greatest World Cup moments and the latest Castrol Rankings data. As part of the campaign, we also set up separate video interviews with The Sun Online, Telegraph TV and ESPN. Fans of the Castrol Football Facebook page rose by over 20% in the fortnight around the live show.

markettiers4dc also worked with fashion client Gray & Osbourn to embed video content into their Facebook wall, allowing users to interact in a much more engaging way and add featured items into their shopping basket on the client’s website using LinkTo(TM) technology.

This year, we will be making the watching and sharing of videos in Facebook even more seamless as we look to stream our live webTV shows into users’ walls, giving them the ability to join the show using Facebook Connect and easily share the experience with their friends in their news feeds.

This is an incredibly engaging use of broadcast within Social Media for brands to produce their own content and talk directly to their advocates who have chosen to ‘like’ them; and something we encourage you to get involved with in 2011.

Driving Broadcast Into The Virtual World

nospam@example.com () — Thu, 10 Feb 2011 17:56:30 +0000

The world of broadcast technology continues to evolve. And whilst it’s often to the benefit of the operators and editors, at markettiers4dc our focus is the exploitation of technological advancements for our clients.

Broadcasting online from our studios and outside locations, has for a number of years been a staple of our output; putting clients much more in control of the media messaging, whilst remaining within the editorial boundaries of the media owners we work with. And this month we took it a step further by unveiling our new virtual studio.

For brands, building a bespoke studio for each broadcast in a traditional sense would be cost prohibitive, but with our new virtual broadcasting environments this is now a truly viable option.

As well as being able to offer our clients a number of standardised virtual sets, from business sets to softer lifestyle sets, we can also create tailor made environments. Using this exciting technology means that you can completely transform the size of the studio and move from around the set in a single frame. There is also the opportunity to combine virtual elements with real world-spaces – there is literally no limit on how your brand can be integrated within the set without distraction to the audience or your key messages.

As Scott Jackson, Head of Production puts it: "We’re really excited at the launch of our Virtual Studio. We’ve been championing the opportunity for brands to create their own broadcast content for online for many years. However, they can now take the studio environment to a whole new level by easily customising the set so that it becomes individually crafted for their needs. Whether the intention is for external or internal communications, this is something we encourage all of our clients to explore."

As well as the virtual studio, we’re embracing new digital work flows which allows us to incorporate tapeless production and output to either HD or standard definition, depending on the requirements.

These new developments will completely transform the level of scope that our studio facility provides and will see our clients firmly at the forefront of broadcasting.

For more information contact Scott Jackson or Emily Conway on 020 7253 8888.

X-Factor and Ofcom

nospam@example.com (Russell Goldsmith) — Tue, 14 Dec 2010 10:51:46 +0000

Last week I was very kindly asked by Stephen Waddington of Speed Communications to write a guest post on his blog ahead of the X-Factor final

You can read it http://www.speedcommunications.com/blogs/wadds/2010/12/12/guest-post-markettiers4dc%E2%80%99s-russell-goldsmith-on-x-factor-and-ofcom/
And congrats to Matt Cardle!

With great power comes great responsibility

nospam@example.com (Russell Goldsmith) — Thu, 04 Nov 2010 15:44:39 +0000

Today the IAB hosted their annual Engage Conference and I was invited to write one of the Official Dossier Case Notes that was handed out to delegates. Before you think I've gone all geeky on you with my references to Marvel Comic characters, the theme of the day was about Supercharging your brand, and I was asked to look at how brands can reach super hero status. Enjoy!

With great power comes great responsibility

So wrote Stan Lee for his creation, Spider-Man - a great line and one that should be considered carefully by brands trying to use social media as a route to elevate themselves to superhero status.

The Internet has a tremendous ability to influence, especially through peer-to-peer recommendation. Brands that can provide a platform for conversation in the social space can therefore create a distinct advantage over their competitors. However, the responsibility lies in ensuring the messages they deliver are clear and transparent as today’s marketing savvy consumers will be quick to share their opinions on Twitter, Facebook or their personal blogs if they thought otherwise.

That said, asking for an organisation to be transparent when comparing them to becoming a superhero is a bit of a contradiction. For example take the late David Caradine’s Superman monologue as the character Bill to Uma Thurman’s Bride in Quentin Tarantino’s Kill Bill Vol.2:

“Now, a staple of the superhero mythology is, there's the superhero and there's the alter ego. Batman is actually Bruce Wayne, Spider-Man is actually Peter Parker. When that character wakes up in the morning, he's Peter Parker. He has to put on a costume to become Spider-Man. And it is in that characteristic Superman stands alone. Superman didn't become Superman. Superman was born Superman. When Superman wakes up in the morning, he's Superman. His alter ego is Clark Kent. His outfit with the big red "S", that's the blanket he was wrapped in as a baby when the Kents found him. Those are his clothes. What Kent wears - the glasses, the business suit - that's the costume. That's the costume Superman wears to blend in with us.”

Bill’s point about superheroes wearing a mask or costume to hide their true identity is something a brand simply can’t do in terms of online marketing as it would probably fall into the unethical and illegal area of ‘astroturfing’ - where as an organisation, you are pretending that the planned and often paid-for online buzz of a campaign is spontaneously generated by the public.

So how can brands therefore change the way they look to make people view them in a better light without hiding who they are?

An excellent example is Prudential’s NMA Effectiveness Award winning campaign, also shortlisted for Brand innovator of the year by Marketing Week Engage Awards. In this instance, Sound Creative revolutionised the traditional communications in annual pension statements, breaking the mould of regional 'pensions seminars' for Prudential by targeting customers approaching retirement using video in the form of a live and interactive webTV show, positioned as a ‘Pensions Surgery' to deliver advice and drive enquiries. By replacing the old style country wide hotel road show that took time, resource and a lot of money, and required customers to be willing to leave the comfort of their own home to listen to a dry discussion on personal finance, Prudential tried something new, offering a more engaging, plain speaking way to talk to their clients over the web instead.

Viewers sent in questions before and during the live broadcast, which was streamed on Prudential’s website and featured consumer finance personality Alvin hall, alongside a Prudential pensions expert.

Prudential also worked their database well before and after the broadcast to drive questions, create an appointment to view and remind them the show was available on demand and it’s since been viewed 30,000 times.

There’s even more that can be achieved with interactive video now that you can stream through Facebook, which is what markettiers4dc did for whisky maker Laphroaig in their recent online whisky tasting event, broadcasting live via satellite from Jerez in Spain to their Facebook fan page. Using Facebook as the media platform enabled viewers to share the link to the broadcast in their newsfeeds so that friends could join in the experience, whilst following tweets about the show from all over the world.

These are just two examples where brands have used video in an innovative and engaging way to elevate their status to their customers - simple, effective and engaging, and by adapting a quote from another Stan Lee superhero creation, The Hulk, I’d recommend embracing your customers in the social media space:

“don’t make them angry, you might not like them when they’re angry.”

Live & Interactive WebTV for Internal Communications

nospam@example.com (Russell Goldsmith) — Sun, 17 Oct 2010 11:45:38 +0100

We recently attended the CIPR's Internal Communications conference and were showing examples of how companies had used live & interactive webTV to engage with employees. Our slides are now available at Slideshare, showing example case studies for M&S, e2v and Pernod Ricard

http://www.slideshare.net/russg/live-interactive-webtv-for-internal-communications

Presentation at a4uexpo - Affiliate Marketing

nospam@example.com (Russell Goldsmith) — Sun, 17 Oct 2010 11:26:45 +0100

Last Tuesday I was kindly invited by Webgains to present at the a4uexpo London show to discuss how our work in using live online broadcast and interactive videos can add value to affiliate marketing programmes.

My presentation is now available to download at Slideshare -

http://www.slideshare.net/russg/a4uexpo-using-broadcast-and-social-media-to-acquire-customers-in-affiliate-marketing

Q2 2010 RAJAR RESULTS

nospam@example.com (James Erskine) — Fri, 06 Aug 2010 07:35:00 +0100

The Rajar reports are the radio industry’s version of the TV BARB panel. A panel of listeners complete a daily questionnaire recording which radio stations they listen to and for how long. These results are published on a quarterly basis. From Q2 2007 listeners have been able to tell RAJAR if they listened on AM/FM, DAB Digital Radio, Digital TV (Sky/Freeview/Cable) or via the Internet.

General Overview

Radio achieved a record reach of 46.8 million people, or 91% of the UK adult population, listening to a station for at least five minutes during the course of an average week. Commercial radio's reach was 32.8 million people – this is the 4th consecutive quarter of growth for commercial radio and its highest reach in the last decade.

Commercial radio increased its share from 41.3% in Q1 to 43.2% in Q2. In contrast the BBC saw its share fall from 56.5% in Q1 to 54.6% in Q2. The BBC’s reach fell from 34.88m to 34.59m.

National Radio

The three National commercial stations all had good results. talkSPORT benefitted from their World Cup coverage, recording their highest ever weekly reach for Q2, and their second highest reach of all time (2.5 million reach). They recorded record figures for 15-34men (744,000 reach, up 14% yoy), abc1ads (1.4m, up 8%) & abc1men (1.1m).

Classic FM is still the largest commercial station in the UK with 5.7m weekly listeners – this is up on Q1 but down slightly year on year. Absolute Radio’s network reach is back up to over 2 million listeners – the highest since January 2009. This is still 500,000 behind talkSPORT but is up 11% on Q1 & 8% yoy. They benefitted from their World Cup activity fronted by Baddiel & Skinner – this bodes well for their new Premiership coverage in the upcoming season.

The London Market

Magic 105.4’s crown has slipped as the largest London reaching station, as Heart 106.2 have pipped them to the post with 2.185 million listeners per week vs. 2.046 million. However, Magic still put in a very strong performance seeing their London market share grow to 6.4% vs. Hearts 5.1% to put them in top position. Heart recorded their highest ever reach.

The interesting story is not the battle for the top spot but Kiss 100’s performance; they are 11.8% up year on year with a reach of 1.848 million and an impressive growth in share from 4.1% to 5.6%. 95.8 Capital Radio grew their reach by 21,000. Not such a positive result however for their share as they have slipped from 6% to 4.9%.

LBC saw a growth of 82,000 listeners; their reach is their highest since 1994. Absolute’s London reach has grown 17% and hours are up 12% on quarter.

Reach (000’s) Q2 2010 Market Share % Q2 2010

1 Heart 106.2 FM 2,185 1 Magic 105.4 6.4
2 Magic 105.4 2,046 2 Kiss 100 5.6
3 95.8 Capital FM 1,921 3 Heart 106.2 5.1
4 Kiss 100 1,848 4 LBC 97.3 5.0
5 Classic FM (London) 1,308 5 95.8 Captial FM 4.9
6 LBC 97.3 960 6 Classic FM (London) 4.3
7 Total Absolute (Ldn) 821 7 Total Absolute (Ldn) 2.8
8 talkSPORT (London) 613 8 talkSPORT (London) 1.8
9 XFM 104.9 553 9 XFM 104.9 1.4
10 Smooth Radio 415 10 Gold London 1.3

London Breakfast

The Sony award-winning Capital breakfast show has once again retained the number one spot at breakfast in the London commercial market; however the gap between their rivals is narrowing with Heart and Kiss hot on Capital’s heels. Heart, Kiss and Magic all saw impressive increases in reach whilst LBC remained flat at 576,000 weekly listeners.

What is interesting is the market share for London breakfast shows, the playing field much like the reach is evening out in stark comparison to the previous quarter.

REACH 15+ (6-9 am) MARKET SHARE 15+ (6-9 am)
Q2 2010 (000’s) Q2 2010 (%)
1 95.8 Capital Radio 933 1 95.8 Capital Radio 5.7
2 Heart 106.2 FM 925 2 LBC 97.3 5.5
3 Kiss 100 903 3 Kiss 100 5.4
4 Magic 105.4 839 4 Heart 106.2 FM 5.2
5 LBC 97.3 576 5 Magic 105.4 4.6

Kiss FM’s Rickie, Melvin and Charlie breakfast show has gone from strength to strength with reach up from 656,000 to 903,000 listeners.

Local Radio

Global Radio, the UK’s largest commercial radio group, continues to dominate the top 10 commercial station networks with Heart in pole position once more – it is unchanged in terms of market share on quarter, at 5.8%, and down 0.1% on the year, having achieved 5.9% in Q2 2009. Heart East Midlands in particular is at its highest level at 19 per cent reach now with 423,000 listeners, up from 350,000 last quarter.

Bauer Radio now reaches a record audience for the network, with 13 million listeners each week. The Magic network now reaches a total audience of 3.7m across the UK – up 2.6% on year, and the Kiss network now reaches 3.7m listeners – up 13% on year. Big City network recorded its highest reach in over 3 years, with 4.8m people now tuning in every week (up 5% on the quarter) and 42m listening hours (up 2% on the quarter). Notably CFM has increased from 33 per cent reach to 43 per cent reach year-on-year, and Radio Aire in Leeds jumped from 11 per cent reach to 16 per cent suddenly, adding almost 50,000 listeners.

GMG has seen positive results, with the group reporting almost five million listeners in total and Smooth Radio North East, North West and Glasgow recording their biggest ever audience figures in what will be their last quarter with local programmes. All real radio stations except Yorkshire are up, with 2.38 million adults tuning into Real Radio network each week (up 100,000 on the quarter) to consume 21.5 million hours each week (up 200,000 on the quarter).

The 10 commercial station networks in terms of % market share:

Station Q2 2010 Q1 2010 Q22009
1 Heart Network (UK) (H) 5.8 5.8 5.9
2 Classic FM (Q) 3.8 3.7 3.9
3 Galaxy Network (UK) (H) 2.7 2.6 2.5
4 Total Magic (Q) 2.4 2.4 2.5
5 Total Real Radio (H) 2.1 2.1 2.1
6 Total Smooth Radio (H) 2.1 2.1 2.1
7 talkSPORT (Q) 1.7 1.6 1.8
8 Total Kiss Network (H) 1.9 1.7 1.9
9 Total LBC (UK) (H) 1.3 1.3 1.1
10 Total Absolute Radio Network
(Q) 1.4 1.4 1.3

Digital

Digital posted strong results this quarter, with listening share up 17% yoy to 24.6%, weekly reach up 11% to 20 million, listening hours up 17% to 253 million per week, and DAB ownership up 7.6%, to over 18 million adults. DAB radio is still the most popular device to listen to digital radio on, but DTV and Internet listening have risen significantly. Listening via digital TV is now at 4.1%, with internet at 2.9%. Radio listening via mobile phone remains steady with 12.5% of adults listening via their mobile; in the younger 15-24 year demographic, this rises to 29.8%. Many radio stations are now providing Smartphone apps to enhance the mobile phone listening experience, and a recent RAJAR study found that 20% of all Smartphone owners have a radio app.

Absolute Radio continues to outperform the digital market average, with 45.7% of their listening being on a digital platform. Absolute 80s posted another strong set of results, increasing by just over 9% in reach (to 288,000) and hours. Absolute Classic Rock also performed strongly, also increasing reach and hours by 9%. Planet Rock increased reach by 4% to its highest ever reach of 718,000. Podcasts also proved very popular, with Absolute having 3 million podcasts downloaded in June. Absolute expect to see further growth in Q3, as Absolute 90s and Absolute Extra are added to their figures.

Over at Bauer, 3 of their digital stations remain in the top 10. The Hits was up 8% with over 1.1m listeners and along with Smash Hits on 990,000 listeners, are the 2 most listened to commercial digital only stations. Heat also had a very strong result, with 50.3% rise in reach since Q1. NME Radio, recently at risk from complete closure, has doubled its audience share with a rise in overall hours to 1.3m. New owners Town and Country Broadcasting were pleased with the results, seeing them as “a solid base with a strong audience profile”.

Over on the BBC, 6 Music saw another very strong result following news that the BBC Trust has reprieved its closure – it is now the largest digital radio station in the UK. Its reach increased by 100.7% yoy to almost 1.2m, whilst hours increased by 31% to over 10m, making it only marginally smaller than Radio 3. BBC Asian Network, which is still facing closure, also posted a rise in listenership with an increase in reach of 3.8% to 437,000 listeners. Other BBC stations didn’t fare so well, with Radio 5 Live Sports Extra being down 19.1% yoy despite the World Cup, and 1 Xtra’s audience down 5.4% yoy to 600,000.

Consistent growth in digital listening is key to the digital radio switchover agenda over the next few years, as one of the criteria the government has set for switchover is for digital to account for at least 50% of all radio listening.

Reach 15+ (000s)
QonQ YonY Q2 2010 Q1 2010 Q2 2009
1 BBC 6 Music (Q) 16.7 100.7 1,194 1,023 595
2 The Hits (Q) 7.9 -8.4 1,138 1,055 1,243
3 Smash Hits Radio (Q) 16.1 -14.3 990 853 1,155
4 BBC7 (Q) -9.5 13.8 949 1,049 834
5 Planet Rock (Q) 3.5 1.3 718 694 709
6 Heat (Q) 50.3 17.5 672 447 572
7 1Xtra from the BBC (Q) -9.5 -5.4 600 663 634
8 Jazz (Q) -1.7 -3.9 463 471 482
9 BBC Asian Network 22.4 3.8 437 357 421
10 NME (Q) 11.9 17.7 253 226 215

BBC

As UK radio listening surged to its highest level for more than a decade in the three months to the end of June, the BBC also benefited from the period that included the general election campaign and alliance-building period, and the World Cup.

Reach (000’s) Q2 2010 Q2 2009
BBC Radio 2 13729 13424
BBC Radio 1 11810 11342
BBC Radio 4 10403 9999
Five Live 6763 6415
BBC Radio 3 1858 2021

Radio 5 Live reported its biggest audience since its launch in 1990, with a weekly reach of 6.76 million listeners, up 5.4% year on year and 4.4% quarter on quarter. Its share was 4.8%, and clearly benefited from both the political and sporting news being at the top of many listener’s agendas.

Radio 4 broke through the 10 million listener barrier, with a record average weekly audience of 10.4 million between April and June, with its best ever audiences for shows including Today, PM and The Archers. The station's weekly audience was up 4% year on year and 3.7% on the last quarter, with a share of 12.5%. This was Radio 4's best quarterly figure since Rajar's new methodology in 1999; the station had a 12.5% share.

Radio 4's Today pulled in a record 6.98 million weekly listeners. Record audiences were also achieved by other Radio 4 news shows including the Six O'Clock News and PM.

Radio 1 pulled in a record audience of 11.81 million listeners, up 4.1% year on year and 0.6% quarter on quarter. The station's share was 9.3%. Chris Moyles

Radio 2 attracted 13.73 million listeners on average each week, up 2.3% year on year but down 5.8% quarter on quarter. Its share was 15.9%: Chris Evans didn’t contribute to this, having lost 1 million of Radio 2’s Breakfast listeners Q-o-Q, but he’s still doing better than Sir Tel. His figures are still the second highest total ever recorded for an individual radio programme with a weekly reach of 8.25m (down for 9.53m in Q1).

There was less positive news at BBC Radio 3, which reported an average audience of 1.86 million, down 8.1% year on year and 8.2% quarter on quarter.

Summary

This was a great set of results for radio in general and especially for commercial radio. Radio listening has increased to its 2nd consecutive all time high, and the BBC/Commercial split has swung 2 points in favour of commercial radio’s favour.

The individual success stories are talkSPORT and their hugely popular World Cup coverage, Kiss FM who are now No.2 in London in terms of share, BBC 6 Music becoming the most popular digital radio station in the UK and the BBC talk stations, with Radio 4 & Five Live capitalising on the popularity of the World Cup and General Election.

Enjoy playing Foursquare, but only in moderation.

nospam@example.com (Russell Goldsmith) — Thu, 19 Aug 2010 07:12:07 +0100

As a member of the IAB Social Media Council, I posted the following entry on their blog this week - www.iabuksocial.co.uk . . .

Earlier this week I checked into Sa Fàbrica de Gelats on Foursquare to let my friends know that I’ve just bought one of their speciality Orange ice creams whilst in Soller in Mallorca on holiday.

Now, why they would care to know that is another debate! The reason I did it, however, is because as part of my job, I’m still trying to understand the benefit this latest alleged Social Media star can have to my clients, and at the moment, I’m still struggling to find the answer.

I’ve spent a good six months ‘playing’ on Foursquare, going through the similar patterns as many others – checking in to everything I could, realising that on some occasions, I’m not checking in to the official pages of said venues, taking pleasure at becoming mayor of my company, and even the IAB for a day, and then realising the few friends I had in the game are people doing something similar to me for a living, i.e. those in the industry trying it out too, and I assume, similarly getting bored, by the frequency of their check-ins drying up! In fact, the lack of interest from those outside of the industry highlights half the problem. Back in April, I had the unfortunate pleasure of going to support Spurs in the FA Cup semi final at Wembley and watching them lose to a bankrupt Portsmouth. I checked in to the Stadium on Foursquare to see how popular it would be from a decent sample of 90,000 people in one location, and there were a total of 7 players checked in, one was me, and 2 others I knew! The warning signs were there already.

However, as I’ve read with interest the stories about Foursquare looking to raise money, I’ve continue to think there must be a benefit to it to a brand’s marketing. So it was that I recently tried to claim ownership of a page that had already been set up for my company – misspelt I might add - and set up a page of our own for Studio1 in our office. In fairness, Foursquare were quick to respond that I now managed the page I set up, but the one already in existence – an unofficial page for my company markettiers4dc – still exists and still has someone unconnected to my company managing it.

With this in mind, I then looked at testing how to monitor and moderate any comments/tips that are added to my page before recommending it to a major client of ours for a campaign we were planning. After all, given another flaw in the Foursquare game being that one doesn’t even have to be in the venue itself to check-in, any passer-by to my office could add any tip they want about Studio1 – positive or negative. Now I know the whole point of social media is to allow a freedom of dialogue, but I’m only interested in what actual visitors of ours have to say about their experience in our studio, not any random person who hasn’t even stepped inside our reception. I therefore contacted Foursquare to ask about how I could moderate my official page. Here’s the official response:

Only we can delete tips and will only do so if they are using profanity or for another misuse. You can bring those to our attention at bizhelp@foursquare.com always.

Are you kidding me? I have to send comments that I am not happy about on my own page to Foursquare to decide if they should remain on there or not!
Decision made! Foursquare, you need to seriously consider your strategy if you want my budgets. Quite timely, therefore, that this week I’ve read more and more stories about Facebook setting itself up as a geolocation challenger - http://mash.to/2nZKq. Oh dear Foursquare, if Facebook really did offer you around $120 million or so to acquire you, why oh why not take the cash and Foursquare off?

Russell Goldsmith
@russgoldsmith