As the radio industry seeks more feedback from its listeners, here you can see a short video on what listeners tune into and what they really want to hear on their radios.
Thanks to a strong performance from Radio 1, Radio 4 and the BBC local regional services, the BBC beat its previous high of 55.4%, set in the first quarter of 2006, writes Nikki Sandison. Radio 4 recorded the biggest swing in popularity from the previous quarter adding almost 300,000 listeners to reach a weekly audience of 9.64m, while its share was up from 11.1% to 12.2%. Radio 1 now accounts for 10.1% of all radio listening, having climbed from 9.7% last quarter and 9.1% a year ago.
Fru Hazlitt, GCap London's new managing director said that the poor quality of radio advertising was contributing to commercial listeners' growing defection to BBC stations. She is planning to set up a listener poll to rate the quality of ads on GCap's stations and the responses will be fed back to advertisers. GCap has already restricted ad breaks on two of its stations, Capital 95.8 and theJazz, to a maximum of two ads in a row.
Some radio experts have remained positive, pointing to a marked increase in listeners for commercial radio's national stations and success for its digital-only stations such as Oneword, Smash Hits and Virgin Radio Xtreme. Commercial radio still dominates digital listening, with overall listening up 5% and with 19.5% of the UK population now living in a home with a DAB radio. Positive results were also seen for stations that hired celebrity DJs, such as Classic FM, Talk Sport and Magic.
Xfm, GCap's alternative music station, recently announced that it would be creating a new brand called X U and would be encouraging listeners to decide what content is aired between 10am and 4pm on Xfm's London, Manchester, Scotland and soon-to-be launched South Wales stations. Conventional DJs will be scrapped between these hours and listeners will be able to construct playlists via a database of songs available on the Xfm websites. The broadcast playlists will then be decided by either listeners' votes or by Xfm producers. Xfm claims the creation of XU will provide advertisers with greater levels of insight into its listeners.