The UKRD group has had an up-and-down RAJAR day – with some stations doing well and some being hit by changes to TSA sizes. Star Radio in Bristol lost 12,000 listeners – possibly due to the arrival on the air of Original 106.5 half way through the quarter. Pirate FM, County Sound and KLFM all improved their market share.
Star Radio in Cheltenham lost a third of its audience so now just has 10,000 listeners per week – a bigger TSA means they fell 5 percentage points in reach from 11% to 6%. It was celebration at Star Radio in North Somerset though, with a slight increase in reach and a good rise in hours – giving the station its best market share since Q2/05. Star Radio in Bristol not only lost reach but total hours as well – they're down 100,000 to 221,000 – that's compared with 321,000 in Q1/07.
In East Anglia, Fen Radio lost some reach (again TSA changes to blame) but average hours were up. Down the road in Cambridge it was the same story – 4,000 fewer listeners but the ones that do listen are listening longer. KLFM's enlarged TSA lost them three percentage points in terms of reach, even though their number of listeners stayed the same.
UKRD's Group PD Phil Angell told Radio Today: "We’re on cloud 9 with the results at our major stations, though have perhaps stopped at cloud 5 for a couple of our other properties. As RAJAR highlighted prior to publication, the new methodology was always going to affect a number of stations, and like all programmers in the UK we will be looking carefully at adjusting some of our TSAs for future surveys so we can get a fairer picture."
"As usual after every RAJAR, nonsense will be spouted by everyone," he continued. "But I’m really heartened with the overall picture for our group. It remains a funny old time for everyone in commercial radio, and we’ve all got the joy of another RAJAR result in 10 weeks time. I can’t wait!"
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