Frinton-based Big L Radio might have got some publicity this week on TV news items about pirate radio, but it doesn't make up for the fact that they now have an official 0% market share. Reach is up to its highest ever – 6,000 – and is now recorded as 0% of the TSA rather than a your-audience-is-too-small-to-report asterix in the figures. An apparent anomaly in Q1/07 gave Big L average hours of 23.5 – normal service is now resumed with a Q2 figure of 4.1 hours per listener.
Elsewhere around the country we've been looking at how some of the smaller stations have done in the latest RAJAR book.
- Absolute Radio – who are getting ready to bring JACK-fm to the UK – saw their current Oxford station, FM107.9, lose 40% of its audience quarter on quarter – reach has fallen from 23k to 14k (a drop of 4 percentage points for reach). Hours and market share are also down.
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Hertbeat FM is having a good year, increasing its audience share to 6% from just 2.4% this time 12 months ago. Weekly reach is also up by 4,000 quarter-on-quarter for the Hertfordshire station, giving it a reach of 14%.
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106.8 Lite FM lost 7,000 listeners this quarter. Their weekly reach of 23,000 is at its lowest in 5 years. Might they be feeling the effects of Peterborough breakfast jock Kev Lawrence's return across the city to Hereward? (Hereward's reach is up 9,000 this quarter by the way, their best figures in over a year!)
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Lite's sister station, Northamptonshire's Connect FM (both are owned by Forward Media), added 4,000 listeners but saw a drop in both hours and share.
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107 The Bee in Blackburn has more people listening longer, with average hours up from 9.4 to 13.5 quarter-on-quarter. Market share for The Bee is its best ever at 5.5% but reach stays constant at 16,000.
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Atlantic FM's third set of RAJARs take them back down to almost the same as their first quarter but average hours are up.
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Radio Norwich 99.9 grew in their third survey – adding 3,000 listeners to give them a new reach of 8%. Total hours are 62,000 more than three months ago, at 273,000.
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106.7 KCR (formerly The Rocket when owned by TLRC) put on 2,000 listeners in the latest quarter. The postcode sampling changes give them a 25% bigger TSA in Merseyside (a rise of 75,000 people), and they maintained their 4% reach. Average hours are up from 11.5 to an impressive 14.3 (although not as high as the amazing 20.9 recorded in Q1/06).
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