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RAJAR Round Up: 6 Music and Radio X score record audience figures
By Chris Cooke | Published on Thursday 27 October 2016
So, the latest radio listening figures are out everybody – yes, it’s RAJAR day yet again.
For younger readers, radio is a medium via which old people consume audio, both speech and music, through special ‘wireless’ devices which, confusingly, often have a few wires, but which receive said audio, both speech and music, through special transmissions that are delivered over the air in the form of radio waves, sometimes with an element of frequency modulation, and which the aforementioned wireless device is capable of receiving, so that the aforementioned old people can tune into to said transmissions of audio as and when they wish. It’s a bit like YouTube. But without the pictures. And without the option to choose the music. And you can’t skip the ads. And you can’t write angry comments next to things you just watched. So, basically, it’s like a shit YouTube.
Anyway, let’s see who’s been listening to the radio this summer, shall we? Yes, it’s our five point summary of those bloody RAJARs.
1. Just over nine million people were listening to Chris Evans on Radio 2 over breakfast in recent months, which sounds good, though that’s 400,000 less than earlier this year. Radio 2, meanwhile, saw its overall listening numbers slip by 150,000 to 15.1 million.
2. Over on Radio 1 Nicky Boy Grimshaw managed to persuade 200,000 of his listeners to turn off, so that 5.25 million people are now tuning into to his breakfast show. Though Radio 1 in general had a pretty good quarter, with overall audience up 400,000 to 9.87 million.
3. Good old 6 Music continues to out-perform itself, scoring a new record audience of 2.34 million listeners. Let’s once again spend six seconds remembering that time they tried to shut this digital station down.
4. In commercial radio land, Global Radio would like you all to know that the Capital “brand” now reaches 8.7 million listeners, up 213,000 on the last set of RAJAR figures and 732,000 year on year. It’s also the most popular commercial radio outlet in the actual capital. By which I mean London. Sorry Edinburgh.
5. Oh, and the Radio X experiment does now seem to be paying off, the revamped Xfm currently reaching 1.3 million listeners each week, its highest audience ever. Though Chris Moyles is still talking to a far smaller audience than in his Radio 1 days. But hey, that’s probably a good thing.
In the mood for more RAJAR chit chat? Here’s radio expert Matt Deegan with his thoughts.
