Rajar has today announced 90% of the adult (15+) UK population – 47.7 million people – tuned in to their selected radio stations in the third quarter of 2013. This is up by approximately 1 million adults on the same quarter of the previous year.
Highlights this quarter include a major decline for Nick Grimshaw’s BBC Radio 1 breakfast show – recording the lowest listening figures in 20 years. However, better news for Kiss FM, which saw a 16.5% quarterly and yearly increase – taking its weekly reach to more than 5 million.
Here, Newsline presents industry reaction on the latest results, with opinion from Dan Todaro of Gekko:
‘What stands out for me is the extent to which our lives are so increasingly dominated by smartphones. Convergence is an oft-used term, but radio consumption in particular provides a stark illustration at the speed in which this is happening. Consider that back in Q1 of 2011 and the iPhone 4 was still very much a novelty for most consumers and less than three years later consumption in the 25+ category has almost doubled, whilst the age group fuelling this shift – the 16-24s has jumped from 28.6% to well over 40%.
With digital listening increasing across DAB, Digital TV and online through PCs and laptops, it too paints a portrait of how our lifestyles are being fundamentally altered by the technology around us. Everything is so easily accessible and radio is no longer restricted to specialist devices.
Far from being a platform in decline, I think the possibilities for brands to engage is ever-increasing as the way in which we engage and interact with radio changes. Particularly as our current 16-24’s grow older and give way to a new generation of even more highly connected, digitally savvy youths, we’ll soon know of radio only as a medium.’
Read the full article at: http://mediatel.co.uk/newsline/2013/10/24/rajar-q3-2013-industry-reaction/
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