Q3 2012 RAJARs: The troubles deepen

Since Midnight, the RAJAR figures for the thirdf quarter of 2012 have been made public, and it has to be said, at first impressions, the figures don't look good for the health of radio.  None of the sectors saw any gain in hours on the last quarter, and local commercial radio has continued a steady downward trend that has been ongoing, since 1999.  In terms of reach, BBC radio saw a very minor gain, whilst commercial radio saw a very minor loss.

Both BBC Radio 1 and BBC Radio 2 saw drops in reach terms on the quarter, whilst Radio 3 and Radio 4 both saw reach gains.  Radio 3's is it's traditional summer bump from the Proms, which always brings listeners to the station who may not normally listen at other times. 

Interestingly, both 5 Live and 5 Live Sports Extra saw no Olympic bounce at all.  In fact, both saw slight declines. 

Of the BBC's DAB stations, only Asian Network was below 1 million.  Both Radio 4 Extra and Radio 6 Music saw gains, whilst World Service held steady and 1Xtra saw a small decline. 

On the national commercial radio side, Talksport saw it's reach climb above 3 million, Classic FM saw a slight decline, whilst Absolute Radio saw a major decline overall, down over 200,000 listeners on reach to just above 1.5 million listeners.  However, Absolute 80's the group flagship digital station, saw an increase, as did Absolute 90s.

Global Radio can't be too happy with their brands overall.  Only Xfm saw gains in both reach and hours, LBC saw a gain in reach, but as with a lot of stations that see gains in reach, LBC saw a drop in both hours and share.  All the other brands, Heart, Gold, Capital, Choice, Real and Smooth, all of them saw drops in both reach and hours overall.  Within those general figures there are some incredible strange variations, some of which this time are more unusual than normal.

Looking deeper, into the individual stations, there are some interesting stories, but the one that stands out, and for very much the wrong reason, is Gold Devon.  If you were to look at the year to year figures, you'd ask what the issue was.  In the past year has gained 3,000 listeners, 30,000 hours and 0.2% share.  Unfortunately those figures do not reveal the whole story about Gold Devon.  In early 2012, the Exeter and Torbay local DAB multiplex arrived in North Devon, which increased the availability of Gold Devon into an area where it had never been available on AM before.  Between Q3 2011 and Q1 2012, Gold Devon's reach almost doubled from 28,000 to 52,000.  Their hours more than doubled from 271k to 605K, and their share more than doubled from 1.1% to 2.6%.  Things were looking quite good for Gold Devon at this point.

However, that changed in April with the arrival on DAB of North Devon based community radio station, The Voice.  The Voice had long lobbied to be allowed to broadcast to North Devon after the almagamation of Lantern FM, into what eventually became Heart Devon.  They had been broadcasting a 28 day FM RSL and during that RSL, they agreed a deal with NOW Digital, to broadcast on DAB as well full time on the multiplex that had not long arrived in North Devon.  They launched on DAB in April, broadcasting not just to North Devon, but also to Exeter and Torbay.  The net result: Gold Devon got hammered.  They lost about 40% of their reach, dropping from 52,000 to 31,000.  Their hours have dropped by a little more than half, down from 605k to 301k, and their share halved from 2.6% to 1.3%

In the past year, Gold Devon has been on a huge rollercoaster, and we still don't yet know where this rollercoaster will end.  There is still a possibility that Gold Devon could drop even more listeners.  At one time, Gold Plymouth had just 7,000 listeners, and the Plymouth area is the only area in Devon now where Gold broadcasts on both AM and DAB.  The fact that Gold's local advertising has to be sold together with Heart in Devon, rather than separately, suggests that Gold Devon may not be profitable on its own, even with the fact that there is no local programming, and limited local content, sometimes as little as a 20 second weather forecast per hour. 

Every station's figures fluctuate to some degree, but Gold Devon's figures are amongst some of the wildest swings I've ever witnessed.

In Devon and Cornwall, few stations are performing well.  BBC Radio Cornwall is down 7,000 reach on the quarter, but is up 2,000 reach on the year.  Over the year, Radio Cornwall has gained 42,000 hours, but the share has dropped 0.4%, mainly because the TSA figure is 4,000 more now than it was in Q3 2011.  On the quarter, Radio Cornwall has gained 84,000 hours and 0.3% share, mainly due to the fact people are listening longer.  12.4 hours per week this quarter, compared with 11.3 last quarter. 

BBC Radio Devon's reach was stable at 203,000, still down 56,000 listeners on the year, but the station saw a massive drop in listener hours.  9.5 hours per week this quarter compared with 11.4 hours last quarter and 10.7 hours a year ago.  As a result of this, the total hours figure dropped below 2 million for the first time in a long time, if ever.  I cannot recall nor can I find currently evidence that it has ever been that low.  The share of listening dropped below 10% for the first time in a long time, if ever, in fact it dropped below 9%.  Something has clearly gone awry at Radio Devon, and frankly without some in-depth investigation, I'm not sure what the answer is.  It maybe that the cancellation of the separate Plymouth breakfast show has significantly hurt the station. 

Whatever the problems are at BBC Radio Devon, Heart Devon has definitely benefited from them.  Although down in the reach by 19,000 on last year, the station is up 17,000 on the previous quarter.  Share is up by 1.2% on the previous quarter as well, and total hours was also up by 241,000, though that's still down 96,000 hours on last year.  Sister station Heart Cornwall is also performing well, well above my own expectations.  69,000 listeners is up 1,000 on the quarter, down 1,000 on the year, so definitely holding steady there.  However, Heart Cornwall is outperforming its predecessor, Atlantic FM in terms of holding on to listeners.  Average Hours per week in up to 7.4 hours, a new high for the licence, beating Atlantic FM's previous best of 7.1 hours per week in Q1 2011.  Both Heart Devon and Heart Cornwall are outperforming the network as a whole on Average Hours per week, with Heart Devon's 8.1 and Heart Cornwall's 7.4 beating the network's 7,2.  However, all these figures are still on the low side of what I consider to be the mark to aim for, which is 10 hours a week and higher.  However, none of these figures are remotely anywhere near the worst.  Absolute 70's scores 3.1 hours per week, then The Hits scores 3.0 hours per week.  Pulse 2 scores a paltry 2.8 hours per week, but that is beaten by Q, the worst performer of them all at just 2.7 hours per week.  In terms of keeping them listening, Heart do okay.

The other story that I've been following with interest is Celador Radio, and more particularly, their soft AC brand, The Breeze.  Figures for The Breeze have never been great, and even though the Hampshire version has increased their reach by 7,000 to 42,000; the South West version has slipped from 29,000 to 26,000.  Even the recently rebranded Midwest Radio, which is now The Breeze, but still reports under the Midwest Radio name, has slipped from 37,000 to 35,000 listeners.  Given the fact that The Breeze has been removed from the Bristol and Hampshire local multiplexes, the viability of the brand as a whole, as an FM only brand, is seriously called into question.  Given that two other FM only stations in Devon have either lost listeners in the past quarter or not gained any listeners, the idea that any station only needs to be on FM these days, is starting to smell like a busted myth.  Radio Exe did not gain any listeners in the last quarter, holding at just 25,000 reach.  However, it did keep listeners for a bit longer, so hours and share were up.  Palm FM on the other hand lost 3,000 listeners in the last quarter, and both hours and share were maginally lower.  Back with Celador, until recently, Jack FM was the better performer.  However, in the last quarter,, Jack Bristol saw a sharp decline in reach, from 116,000 to 92,000.  However, hours and share both saw an increase on the previous quarter, but are still way down on last year.  Jack Oxfordshire is seeing declines in reach, hours and share on the previous quarter.  However, Jack South Coast is performing better on reach, hours and share.

Another story worth mentioning is Free Radio 80s, which replaced Gold in the West Midlands.  In the Birmingham area, Free Radio 80's is outperforming what Gold used to achieve.  93,000 compared to 71,000.  Even around the Coverntry area, performance is the same at 21,000.  So right now, I'd call Free Radio 80s a success story so far.

So overall, what do the figures tell us?  Well, non-music radio held itself together, better than music radio in the last quarter, and digital radio only stations seemed to perform better than FM only stations.  Brand radio seemed to do poorly, but other stations also suffered.  The Olympics were great for TV audiences, but those increased TV audiences meant radio lost out.  Local commercial radio continued to trend downward, with little or no sign that stations are actively trying to reverse the trend.  Radio needs to do something pretty drastic if they are going to attract the attention of younger listeners these days, and just being aural wallpaper, is not going to cut it any longer.

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.