Rajars: Radio 2 audience back above 14m

07:00 | Thursday October 27, 2011

By Paul Williams

Radio 2’s audience rose above 14 million again in quarter three as it extended its lead over sister BBC network Radio 1 as the UK’s most listened to station.

Newly-published Rajar figures show 14.31 million people tuned in to Radio 2 during the three months, 2.5% up on the second quarter and a 4.6% rise on the same period last year.
Radio 1’s audience also moved in the right direction, up 1.4% quarter-on-quarter to 11.85 million listeners, while on a yearly basis it was up 1.7% to move further ahead of Radio 4 as the station with the second biggest audience overall.
Radio 1’s gains came despite Chris Moyles’ breakfast show ratings dropping marginally on a yearly basis by 61,000, while 277,000 fewer people tuned in to him compared to the second quarter. This took his audience down to 7.16 million.
However, his Radio 2 opposite number Chris Evans made gains with another 451,000 people listening to him compared to a year ago and 199,000 more than the last quarter as he consolidated his position as host of the UK’s biggest breakfast show with an audience of 8.86 million.

Listening numbers for BBC digital services 6 Music and Radio 1 Xtra were both down from the previous quarter, dropping 3.2% and 8.9% respectively, but were up compared to the same period last year. The audience for 6 grew by 2.8% on the year to 1.23 million, while 1 Xtra’s was up 12.2% to 904,000.
Within the commercial sector Absolute Radio’s total audience, which takes in all its services, dropped 2.7% on the quarter and 3.0% on the year to 1.60 million, while there were significant gains for some of its individual stations. This was led by Absolute 80s, which was up 13.9% from quarter two and 80.5% on the year to 1.02 million.
Global Radio’s Classic FM slipped by 6.1% on the quarter and 5.1% year-on-year to 5.39 million, while the group’s Capital Network now has 7.03 million listeners, up from 6.88 million on the previous quarter. There are no year-on-year comparisons as the network was only established at the beginning of the year.
Global’s other main network Heart was down 0.5% on the quarter and 4.2% on the year to 7.65 million, while at rival Bauer the Magic, Kiss and Kerrang networks were all down on the quarter, although Kiss was up on a yearly basis by 2.5% to 4.14 million.