Ladies and gentlemen, put on your RAJAR hats, yes, it's radio listening figures time once more. That four-times-a-year opportunity to assess what the only slightly made up official radio ratings mean for the UK radio sector. And, as is the norm these days, it generally means bad news for Capital Radio and good news for the BBC. Though some good news for the wider commercial sector too this time round.
Taking the former first, GCap's flagship London station is still in decline, despite that much hyped on air revamp earlier in the year. Capital Radio lost a fifth of its audience in the past year (which is rather a lot) and in the last three months scored its lowest audience and share in the London market for the second successive quarter. All of which means they are now London's third biggest radio station, behind Chrysalis' Heart and EMAP's Magic. Capital does still own the biggest commercial radio show in London - the Johnny Vaughan breakfast show - but that too has recorded its lowest ever audience for the second consecutive quarter. And although the Jamie Theakston breakfast show on Heart also lost some listeners, the fall there was not so dramatic, meaning that the gap between the two shows is now just 14,000 listeners.
Onto the Beeb, and the Corporation maintains its lead over the commercial sector, with a 54.3% audience share. Radio 1, meanwhile, increased its audience year on year. Audience size was up 2.4% while more people than ever were tuning in to the Chris Moyles breakfast show. And digital station 6Music scored considerable success, with listening figures up 40.4% (total audience is now 400,000 listeners, which is significant for a digital station). Bosses there apparently put a big part of their recent success down to the recruitment of Channel 4 irritant Russell Brand, who's been presenting a "headline-grabbing" Sunday morning show for the station and, in doing so, apparently boosted the station's profile and, therefore, their audience figures. Or something like that.
But it's not all good news for the BBC, which is good news for the commercial sector. Radio 2 and 3, while increasing their number of listener hours, were both down in terms of audience size on this time last year (though Radio 3 did recover from something of a slump earlier in the year). Radio 4 was down slightly, and Radio 5 lost about 5% of its audience.
And the commercial radio sector had some of its own success stories, helping them close the overall gap on the BBC (albeit only slightly). Among the successes in the commercial domain were TalkSport, which was up 8.4% year on year (bet they like RAJARs now!), while Classic FM also saw a 1% rise. Commercial digital stations with national reach like EMAP's Smash Hits, GCap's Capital Life and Chryalis' The Arrow also did well.
Commenting on all this, Andrew Harrison from the RadioCentre, the new body representing the commercial sector, told reporters: "Today's RAJARs point to a thriving commercial radio industry which, hot on the heels of last quarter's results, has once more increased both audience and hours. Digital services are changing the landscape of radio as a whole, and commercial radio in particular".
Meanwhile BBC Director Of Radio & Music, that's that Jenny Abramsky, said this: "I'm pleased to see the continued steady growth of Radio 1, and our digital-only networks contributing to the rise in digital listening".