RAJAR Q1: 2017 – What you need to know

Rajar releases the recent results for the radio market in Wales; giving us insight into the current listening patterns of Welsh radio fans.

We have put together a brief overview of the top line stats.

Wales

Heart South Wales has continued to be the number one commercial radio station in Wales with 451,000 listeners despite dropping 36,000 listeners from Q4 2016.

Capital North West & Wales gained an impressive 29,000 additional listeners, reaching 192,000 listeners per week, 19%.

The Wave is on the comeback after losing 17,000 listeners last quarter, they have regained 7,000 listeners increasing their reach to 26%.

Radio Pembrokeshire continues to achieve the highest percentage weekly reach of any radio station in Wales at 35%.

Smooth South Wales has dropped 5.5 listening hours taking their average listening hours to 9. As Heart North Wales takes the top spot with 10.1 hours and Swansea Sound in close second with 9.6 hours.

Capital South Wales & Heart South Wales both saw a loss of listeners with 16,000 and 36,000

National

The majority of national stations saw weekly reach decline during the first quarter of 2017 – some much more than others – but the radio industry still continues to post healthy listening figures.

• Total Global Radio (UK) maintains its lead in the rankings with almost 22.7 million loyal listeners each week – down just 0.3% quarter-on-quarter (QoQ) and up 2.1% year-on-year (YoY).

• Global’s Heart Extra performed particularly well, up 20.6% YoY.

• LBC Network performed well in the first quarter of the year and managed to grow its weekly reach by 5.5%. Over the year, that rises to 15.5% – a total of 1.8 million listeners.

• Bauer’s Kisstory also bucked the trend with a 10.6% QoQ increase and 7.6% growth over the year – one of the few stations to record both quarterly and yearly gains.

Digital

In total, 32 million people now tune in to radio via a digitally enabled receiver – DAB, digital TV or online – each week.

In an average week, digital listening accounts for 483 million hours; DAB has a 71% share of digital listening hours, digital TV 12% and online 17%.

This quarter saw the highest-ever recorded proportion of in-car radio listening, accounting for 23.5% of all radio listening, growth supported by the increase of in-car digital radio with 87% of new cars now fitted with DAB as standard (Q1 2017 CAP/SMMT).

In this quarter, in-car digital listening hours grew by 33% year-on-year to 64.3 million hours from 48.2 million hours in Q1 2016.

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