Is it just me, or do they publish Rajar figures every couple of weeks these days? I seem to be writing about them all the time. Anyway, a new set of radio listening stats are published today. We'll be quick in our summary - because it's the summer, and somehow these things seem less important when a nice summer holiday beckons. So, here are the only two real news stories to be taken from the new Rajars.
Jamie Theakston has brought minus 250,000 listeners to his new breakfast show on Heart 106.2, which is quite an achievement. Heart admitted that losing a quarter of their listeners since Theakston replaced Jono Coleman back in Apr was "slightly disappointing", which is quite an admission given that radio stations normally manage to find some positive spin whatever their RAJARs. That in mind, "slightly disappointing" pretty much as translates as "a fucking disaster, fire whoever's idea this was, what's Chris Tarrant's phone number, what are the chances of getting Terry Wogan?".
The listening slump is particularly ironic given that Coleman managed to considerably boost his audience in the closing months on the job, helping make Heart London's most popular commercial station. Heart will presumably stress that Theakston's show is very different to Coleman's and that therefore an initial slump was to be expected, and will no doubt be keen to add that they expect a new audience to start tuning in sometime soon. Personally I am not convinced - as we said at the time the new show was launched, Theakston is a good TV presenter, especially when doubled up with someone like Zoe Ball, and he's an OK actor too. But he's a bit rubbish when you put him in a radio studio. Ah well, we'll see I guess.
The second main story of note is that the BBC got very close to beating its record for biggest overall radio audience ever with an average of 32.8 million tuning in to its combined radio services during the quarter. That is close to the previous high of 33 million scored a couple of years back when Radio 4 was enjoying a particularly high listenership. The current boost in BBC listening figures actually comes courtesy of the formerly deflated Radio 1 which has got its audience back up above 10 million, scoring its highest audience share for four years. So well done them. Crucially for the commercial sector, the combined BBC audience still exceeds the combined commercial radio audience - 32.8 million to 31.2 million - which will provide further incentive for the commercial stations to collaborate on Radio Aid style projects in a bid to steal listeners from the Beeb with high profile nationally syndicated radio shows.