Olympic Torch Relay: Day 1: Truro

A selection of photos from the events that took place today in Truro surrounding the Olympic Torch Relay.

My thoughts on the Q1 2012 RAJARs

There are a few notable things in this new report, which was released at Midnight. 

The Cornish local radio stations, all down compared to last quarter.  Very unusual.  Usually one will be up even if the others are down.  Best performer out of the three was BBC Radio Cornwall, which was only down 2,000 in reach and 0.2% in terms of share.  The station maintained its average hours at 11.3 hrs per listener. 

Atlantic FM though, is already showing signs that the move by Global to buy it out might have been a mistake.  The announcement was made on 19th March, right towards the end of Q1.  And if these figures are anything to go by, then Atlantic's listenership might well had already started to desert by the end of the quarter.  The figures are down 5,000 on reach, average hours dropped to 5.4 and share dropped from 3.6 to 3.4%.  And this was before any of the Heart branding got added into the mix.

But surprisingly, the worst performer of the three was Pirate FM.  Down 8,000 in reach, down 0.3 hours in average hours, and down 0.8% in share.  Pirate FM did replace their evening presenter at the beginning of the quarter with an extension of their automated programming.  That maybe the reason why they're down.

In South East Cornwall, you might have expected Heart or Gold to be the beneficiaries of such a drop.  Well if Heart Devon did benefit, though it is unlikely, they lost out elsewhere in Devon.  Heart Devon saw their own audience drop 11,000 on reach, down 0.2 on average hours and down 0.1% on share.  But Gold did gain, but it might not have been entirely due to the reduction in audience in the other stations.  Gold Devon got carraige on DAB in North Devon and maybe that had as much to do with it, as anything else.  Gold gained 13,000 listeners in reach, saw their average hours increase by 4 hours, and as a result, their share more than doubled, from 1.2% to 2.6%.  I will need to pay a little more attention to Gold, to see if I can discern why their audience is growing that significantly.

You might have expected BBC Radio Devon to have picked up significantly from Heart Devon, but they did not.  In fact, they lost 22,000 listeners on reach.  However, average hours went up from 12.5 to 13.2 and as a result, share increased 0.2% on the previous quarter. 

In other news, BBC Radios Guernsey, Jersey and Cornwall continue to be the best performing of the BBC local radio stations, although Cornwall (37%) has moved into second place on that list, putting Jersey (35%) into 3rd place.  BBC Radio Norfolk is 4th on 30% reach, the only other station to achieve 30%+ in terms of reach in the BBC Local Radio stable.  Worst perfomer there is BBC London, in the ultra competitive London market only achieving a 5% reach.  Next was BBC Sussex and Surrey with 9% reach, and equal third, BBC WM and BBC Coventry and Warwickshire, both with 11% reach.

In national commercial radio, Absolute Radio is down 32,000 listeners, whilst Absolute 80s gained 29,000 and Absolute 90s gained 32,000 listeners, Classic FM gained 80,000 listeners, Talk Sport gained 36,000 listeners, Smooth Radio UK gained 2,000 listeners, Jazz FM gained 52,000 listeners and Planet Rock gained 50,000 listeners.

BBC Radio 2 gaining 293,000 listeners, and 5 Live saw an icrease of 137,000 listeners but other BBC nationals did not perform so well.  Radio 1 saw a drop of 524,000 listeners, Radio 4 saw a drop of 527,000 listeners, Radio 3 lost 195,000 listeners.  The BBC national digital stations were also a mixed bag.  Whilst 5 Live Sports Extra saw a massive 336,000 listener increase, Asian Network increased by 68,000 and 6 Music gained 11,000 listeners, on the flip side, 1Xtra lost 99,000 listeners, World Service lost 85,000 and Radio 4 Extra lost 52,000 listeners. 

Overall, it's difficult to determine any distinct pattern or trend, although national commercial radio seemed to be the greater beneficiary, with a few exceptions.  Although Heart Devon lost listeners and Gold Devon gained, the reverse was true across the networks.  Heart gained slightly across the UK, whilst Gold lost listeners.  The Breeze South West continued to lose ground, losing another 5,000 listeners, and dropping below 1% in share, whilst sister station Jack FM gained 10,000 listeners in Bristol, but they average hours went down by 2 hours.  Local commmercial radio doesn't seem to gaining much ground, if any.  Without significant improvement to the local commercial radio product, listeners will continue to desert stations.  The BBC needs to be wary that any cuts made to BBC local radio, especially the replacing of regional evening shows with an England-wide evening show, may send listeners away from the radio entirely in the evening, especially with local commercial radio moving away from live evening shows themselves.  And once they disappear, it will be hard to get them back.

Rajar's released at Midnight.

All the radio stations that subscribe to RAJAR will have recieved their Q1 2012 figures today, and the public figures get released at Midnight tonight.

For me here at Viewpoint, this means that I will be paying especially close attention to the figures for Atlantic FM.  And no, I do not mean Heart Cornwall, as that did not start until May 7th, so well into Q2.  These figures will be the last set of figures for Atlantic FM, as it was.  The figures in Q2 will be transitional between Atlantic FM and Heart Cornwall, so we won't get an idea how Heart Cornwall is really doing until Q3.  Even then, because RAJAR use a year's worth of listening figures to determine the final numbers for Atlantic FM / Heart Cornwall, it won't be until the Q2 2013 figures are released before we get a clear set of Heart Cornwall figures as opposed to a combination of Atlantic FM and Heart Cornwall.

There are three sets of figures that you should pay close attention to. 

Average Hours Per Listener: This is quite simple.  The average number of hours that a listener listens to the station per week.  The lower the number, the less time is spent listening to the station.  For example, 7 hours per listener would indicate an average of an hour per day.  Less than this is considered bad performance.  Above 10 hours a week would be considered good performance.

Listening Share in TSA: This requires a little bit of explanation.  TSA means Total Survey Area, the area which is used to measure the audience.  The population figure on the results give you the size of the population in that TSA aged 15 or older.  The total number of hours that the station accrues, is divided by the total number of hours spent by listeners listening to the radio as a whole, and that gives you your share of listening.  The higher the number, the better the performance.  Below 5% share in considered bad performance, whilst above 10% is regarded as good performance.  Very few stations achieve over a 20% share.

Weekly Reach: This is quite simple.  It's how many people listen to a station for at least 5 minutes a week.  This is measured against the 15+ population (people aged 15 or older) and a percentage is taken.  Generally the higher the percentage, the better the performance, but there are many more factors in here when it comes to judging this.  In London, there are a large number of local radio stations broadcasting on AM, FM and DAB, as well as the national ones.  Whilst in somewhere like Cornwall, there is only the BBC local radio station and 2 ILRs to go with the nationals.  Guernsey and Jersey have only the local BBC station and one commercial station against the nationals.  And now with DAB, there are over 20 national radio stations, not the 8 we've been used to on AM and FM.  It does mean that making sense of the reach figures in a bit trickier.  However, for a local station, a reach below 10% is not good.  And even up to 15% probably indicates some improvement needed.

Basically to improve your overall performance, you need to reach as many people as possible, and once they're listening, get them to listen for longer.  It's not easy, but there are ways to be more successful at it.  I'll get into those methods in a future post.

I'll be ready at Midnight tonight to get the data release and analyse it myself to see what can be determined. 

 

Goodbye Atlantic FM...

So the last live presenter on Atlantic FM signed off today at noon.  The station formerly known as Atlantic FM, but currently known as "Heart is coming", has been playing back to back music since.

Heart Cornwall officially launches at 8am with Victoria Leigh, ex of Atlantic FM's Full Cornish Breakfast, doing the first and only live breakfast show exclusively for Cornwall on Heart.  As it currently stands, there will not be another one in the foreseeable future.  Heart Devon have the excrusiating Emma Scott.  Heart Cornwall will usually just have to put up with her on Saturday Mornings as she will host Saturday Breakfast from 8am to Noon.  Dave Luck hosts Sunday Breakfast between the same times.

Normally, Victoria Leigh will do the drivetime show exclusively for Cornwall from 4pm to 7pm Weekdays, whilst Heart Devon will have Emma Scott.

We won't get our new regular breakfast show until Tuesday morning with Matt and Caroline.  And you can bet that in the 26 hours from Monday 8am to Tuesday 10am, most of the links will be promoting the new Heart Cornwall, even on network programmes.  They have the ability to voicetrack separate links for individual transmitters if they need to, and they'll be taking full advantage of that during that 26 hour period and probably at least once per hour for the rest of the week, except of course during Victoria Leigh's shows.

So, farewell Atlantic FM.  0730 06/07/2006 - 1200 06/05/2012

And farewell as well to Heart Plymouth on the NOW Cornwall DAB multiplex.  That has been replaced already by Heart Cornwall, same output as FM.  Well at least, we're getting the right version of Heart right now, which is still more than can be said for listeners to DAB in North Devon.  I understand they are still getting the Exeter ads on their version of Heart on local DAB.

But although Heart Cornwall may be coming in the morning, I will probably be saying goodbye to it soon afterwards, as I will almost inevitably return to the better products that exist on the radio.  Pirate FM, BBC Radio Cornwall, Smooth Radio, BBC Radio 5 Live, 5 Live Sports Extra, BBC World Service, WNYC, WETA, WGBH and the many other superior choices that are available online. 

But I do have something to look forward to.  CHBN Radio, formerly known as Truro Hospital Radio, will be launching soon on FM, and I will be awaiting their launch with a lot of interest.