The quarterly RAJAR figures have been released for Q2 2008, and in the latest round of the ratings battle the BBC have taken a slight dip.  Chris Moyles and breakfast godfather Wogan both lost listeners.  BBC local stations also lost share in the last quarter with BBC Solent, Jersey, Three Counties and Kent amongst a long list of those reporting woes.

Conversely commercial radio stations achieved a great set of results.  In London Neil Fox’s breakfast took the sought after top spot for Magic's breakfast show.  Elsewhere Island FM and The Bee posted impressive share increases.

Overall the picture for radio is good, and digital continues to notch up total share of listenership, up a tiny 0.1% in the last quarter.  The number of people listening on mobile phone is up by 3.3%, the biggest quarterly jump to date.

With the likes of Kiss 100 announcing content will be available on the new iPhone, this is set to continue.   But I’m confused, surely listening to a show on a 3g mobile makes me an online listener?

In the forthcoming issue of our newsletter Onward (coming in the next few weeks, sign up here for a free copy) we feature an article about the power of research and how a local bias will help gain extensive radio coverage. 

Our thinking is backed up by Radio Centre’s latest survey which has some pretty impressive statistics about the impact of radio news.

On average, local radio stations transmit 20 news bulletins of around 3 minutes each day.  69% of all radio news bulletins contain local news stories. What’s more 93% of stations are transmitting content live online.

To give you an idea of sheer scale of the opportunity the survey reminds us that 347 UK Commercial Radio stations attract a weekly audience of 31 million adults, who listen for over 424 million hours each week.  That’s about half of the total UK population.

Download a pdf of the full survey here.

When I heard the news that rather than reducing my licence fee the BBC was going to give some of its record overseas profits to the directors in the form of a £100,000 per year pay rise, I have to confess, I considered cancelling the direct debit and tearing the TV aerial from my roof.

Then, I read a release on the fully convergent, new iPlayer and I fell back in love with our eccentric aunt. I’ve always thought the BBC was pretty forward thinking in their broadcast convergence strategy, their use of video on bbc.co.uk/news site set a new standard.

Erik Huggers at the BBC says of the new iPlayer.  "The next generation of BBC iPlayer allows UK licence fee payers to catch up on their favourite BBC TV and radio programmes in one place – a completely unique on-demand service.”   

The iPlayer’s got it all, in addition to TV and radio in one place you can ‘pop it out’ and continue browsing other pages, it has a better screen resolution, and in a nod to web 2.0, it suggests other content you may like.  It will also be available on hand-held devices such as the iPhone and even the Nintendo Wii. 

The biggest development of all for me (and many a discussion board) is Virgin Media’s announcement that they are working on implementing a version of the iPlayer on its cable TV network.  This means Virgin Media’s already impressive on-demand service has received a significant boost, and it’s another step towards the inevitable standardisation of on-demand platforms.

With the new iPlayer I don’t need an aerial and it looks like the licence fee is safe for now.

No, absolutely not.

The second instalment of Rajar’s catchily named ‘Podcasting and Radio via The Internet’ survey was published this week and it makes for encouraging viewing. (Link above opens a pdf)

9.4 million people in the UK are now listening to radio online, be it live or listen again this figure is up by 1.3 million since the last survey in October last year, impressive stuff.

The survey also goes on to show that podcasting is on the up, with 3.7 million now regularly downloading podcasts.  Also encouraging is the fact that podcasts are becoming a bigger part of the listening diet with the average respondent subscribing to 3.59 casts up from 3.16.

The best statistic that this report identifies proves our view that Radio is the most adaptable channel.  Rather than diluting radio audiences the web is extending radio’s reach with 13% of respondents now listening to ‘more live radio’ as a result of listen again functionality.

As radio continues to grow and the media continues to change, the nature of its influence is evolving.  Radio Centre’s latest paper shows that in spite of the illicit, and under threat, bit torrent generation, 56% of people are still hearing new music first on radio.

In short, radio just keeps on delivering.

ITV.com bosses are rubbing their hands with glee after Britain’s Got Talent rocketed their video traffic figures to over 12 million views in May alone.

ITV credits a fresh site re-design and the growth of ITV local which has grown by 18% since the start of the year.  ITV’s investment delivers a site where videos have their own tab in search results and their player puts video content at the heart of each page.

This is all great news for broadcast and shows how a commercial operator is successfully re-packaging content for an online audience, complete with in-line ads on most of its clips.  In the light of warnings about reductions in online ad spend it will be interesting to see whether ITV continue to invest over the coming months.