The latest audience research data is now available for radio from RAJAR. This is an important survey to see how commercial and non-commercial radio is engaging with their audiences and which stations and networks are performing for reach and listening hours. We can also gain insight into how any new stations and potentially more target channels are performing since entering the market.

Advertising on radio offers a multitude of audience and regional targeting options, flexibility from spot buys to podcasts and can have relatively low production costs vs other broadcast media. It can offer great value and can work well alongside other media channels.

All radio reach remains strong with 50.2 million people listening weekly, up from 49.5 million vs the previous quarter. Commercial radio continues to widen its lead over the BBC now reaching 8.3 million more listeners than BBC stations, giving commercial stations a 54% share of the overall audience.

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How radio is consumed is changing with digital access growing to 72.2% with DAB having the largest share and at the expense of AM/FM which is now at 27.8%. Smart speaker listening is up vs the same quarter in ’23 but down quarter on quarter with the two previous quarters remaining static. The suggestion could be that household use is close to saturation.

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Peak listening remains morning and evening drive time, though there has been an increase in daytime listening, possibly linked to more people working from home. Listening at home still has the highest share of listening followed by in-car and workplace.

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As for the stations, Heart is the biggest commercial radio station for weekly reach, now with over 10m listeners. This is followed by Greatest Hits Radio (7.5m) and Capital (7.4m). Smooth now reaches a record-breaking 7.8m listeners which includes 533k for the debut of Smooth 80’s. Other notable new station performances came from Kiss Dance (720k) and Kiss R&B (530k) demonstrating the variety available in commercial radio. As for individual shows, Heart with Jamie Theakston and Amanda Holden has the biggest breakfast commercial audience with 4.2m listeners.

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Live radio remains the main choice across all audiences for radio listening, followed by streaming and audio preferred by the younger audiences. Connected radio hours listened look to be growing steadily, no doubt helped by the growth in podcast content consumption, helped by our very own Adam Hopkinson presenting LDTRT!

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Q4 2024 has proven to be another strong quarter for commercial radio with over 40 million listeners tuning in each week. The data suggests that listeners are increasingly engaging with the wide variety of content offered by both linear and digital platforms to offer us opportunities to reach our audience effectively.