RAJARs time everybody. Yes, the quarterly radio listening figures were released yesterday, and as always breakfast show and London radio ratings dominated the headlines.
There was much talk about Chris Moyles' Radio 1 breakfast show which continues to grow, scoring a record 7.31 million listeners in the last quarter of 2007, putting him just 420,000 behind the king of breakfast, Radio 2's Terry Wogan, which is still quite a lot, but the Radio 1 prime-timer is closing the gap.
Despite Moyles' successes, the London commercial stations were keen to point out that he was losing ground to breakfast shows on Capital Radio and Heart 106.2, hosted by Johnny Vaughan and Jamie Theakston/Harriet Scott respectively. Moyles had 888,000 listeners in the capital, while Vaughan got 937,000 and Theakston 915,000.
Heart 106.2's Programme Director, Mark Browning, said that the commercial sector's successes in London, where commercial stations enjoy big name presenters in prime time, were a demonstration as to why radio groups should be allowed to do more programme syndication on their stations around the UK.
While the GCap and Global Radios of this world (Capital Radio and Heart 106.2 owners respectively) compete with each other, actually their biggest competitor is the BBC. The commercial radio stations want to be able to do more programme syndication across the regional stations that they own so that their (normally London based) big name presenters can be used to compete with the national BBC stations in multiple regions. However, OfCom remains resistant to allowing local commercial radio stations to use nationally syndicated shows in prime time - believing that in peak slots local radio stations should be forced to air local programming.
Browning is quoted by the Guardian thus: "We have beaten Radio 1 [in London] whichever time measure you look at. A lot has been said about the Radio 1 breakfast show, but when commercial radio can compete head on, it can beat the BBC. The London market tells us that if commercial radio was freed up from the regulatory burden it is constrained by so it could share best practice across the UK then the real winner would be the listener. Where listeners have a strong commercial radio proposition, and a strong BBC, as they do in London they are choosing commercial radio. We need Ofcom to let us give listeners more choice and better commercial radio".
Between the three big mainstream London stations, Magic (now owned by Bauer Radio after their acquisition of EMAP's radio business) maintained its status as the most popular commercial station, though in terms of market share it was marginally beaten by Global's Heart 106.2.
Capital Radio was, in the main, in third place, despite all those changes introduced by the GCap top guard a year ago. Capital's audience was down quarter on quarter, though moved up 4% year on year, so there was some good news. And, of course, GCap will point out that new Capital Radio MD Paul Jackson's programming changes - most prominently the appointment of Denise Van Outen to co-host breakfast - are just kicking in now, so all is still to play for.
In terms of the breakfast shows, although Johnny Vaughan's breakfast was in one way the biggest - getting 937,000 listeners overall - if you adjust the figures to compensate for the fact the different breakfast shows run to slightly different time slots, then Theakston's Heart 106.2 show wins, because the Capital show audience falls to 864,000 compared to Heart's 915,000. Either way, both Vaughan and Theakston beat Neil Fox, whose Magic breakfast show had had the highest audience figures the previous quarter. His show was now in third place, with 811,000 listeners.
Elsewhere in the RAJARs, the other big story was probably that digital radio listening is at a record high - with 16% of listening taking place through DAB digital radio sets, digital TV boxes or on the net. That said, many commercial digital only stations didn't fair so well. GCap Media's theJazz and Bauer's Smash Hits, Heat Radio and The Hits all saw listening figures fall. Some did see a rise, GCap's Planet Rock and The Chill and Global's The Arrow among them. Ironically two other digital stations to see a rise were Oneword and Virgin Groove, both of which were closed down recently due to lack of profitability.