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Thursday, February 01, 2007

Rajar’s

The Rajar’s are the listening figures for radio in the UK and they have just released the audience figures for Q4.

The overall trend is that the BBC is down (0.3%) whereas Commercial Radio is up (1.5%), although to be fair the trend is not statistically significant. However, it is noticeable that the BBC is only listened to by a mere 28,711k people. Obviously, there is a vast chunk of the great British public who attach zero value to this element of the BBC bundle. However, I confess I’m not one of them and actually attach more value to the Radio than the vastly overpriced BBC TV output.

Another small interesting factoid within the detail is that Radio3 has an audience of only 2,028k which is an embarrassingly small figure especially when compared to the commercial rival, Classic FM which has 5,757k listeners. It makes me think that the hot air generated by OFCOM and the BBC Trust about making available the BBC Orchestra material as non-DRMed downloads was just a waste of energy and a diversion from the real principles at stake.

It is noticeable and pleasing that the fastest growing radio is XFM which is dedicated to indie music and the fastest growing Digital only station is Planet Rock which is dedicated to all rock dinosaurs ;-)

Clarification

Some fan of the beeb has emailed me whinging, so I’d better make myself clear. The 28,711k figure is listeners to BBC National Network Radio, if we include the Local Stations total listeners increase to 32,810k.

Also, the Rajar survey is only for people aged 15+, so the total potential audience is around 50 million.

Apologies for any confusion caused. It is heartening to know that the British Bolshevik Corporation have people monitoring the blogosphere.