I'm sure the RAJAR people launch new radio listening figures every week these days, I always seem to be reporting on them. Anyway, in the latest RAJAR stats the audience of Chris Moyles' Radio 1 breakfast show has gone over 7 million for the first time, four of the Beeb's five digital only radio services scored record numbers of listeners, Radio 4 got its biggest ever listening share, and the BBC radio network together scored a record 56% audience share overall. So all in all its been a good quarter at the BBC RAJARs wise, which is never good news for the commercial radio sector.
Over in commercial radio land, there was some good news for GCap, who have had some disappointing RAJARS in recent years, especially at flagship London station Capital FM. But this time Capital saw its audience rise by 10.9%, and Johnny Vaughan's breakfast show reclaim its market leader position in the London commercial radio market over main rival, Heart 106.2's Jamie Theakston, so that's nice. Elsewhere in the world of GCap, Classic FM increased its listenership by quarter of a million and Xfm saw a 32% audience increase. All of which encouraged GCap Operations Director Steve Orchard to tell mad.co.uk: "We've arrested Capital's decline and positioned it as a fresh, credible, contemporary station, away from the plastic end of pop. The marketing campaign we recently launched has, so far, achieved that objective. That said, there is no silver bullet advertising campaign that will turn it around - it's a long term process. The [Capital/GWR] merger has been a difficult process and a lot of that has been self inflicted. Millions of pounds were wasted on marketing in the past because the product was not right, but we have now got the product right. We are out of that period now. Our priorities are now to develop our online offering and boost our core brands".
There's a tradition that whenever RAJARs are released I promise specific analysis of listening stats in the local or digital radio sectors in future editions, and then never get round to doing it. So look out for our indepth analysis of local and digital radio RAJARs in tomorrow's CMU Daily.