Listening figures for Q4, 2009

One or two surprises have made themselves apparent with the latest listening figures for Quarter 4, 2009. Which is good after the damp squib that was Q3.

Wogan has held his own as he left BBC Radio 2, handing over 8.1million listeners to Chris Evans. BBC Radio 1's Chris Moyles added 200,000 listeners but what did Radio 3 do to lose 320,000 fans?

In the commercial radio sector, Heart is back as London's number one station, followed by stable-mate Capital FM. It means former champion Magic 105.4 is now number three, when counting bums on seats rather than market share. If share if your game, Magic is number one and LBC takes 2nd place.

talkSPORT has registered its highest ever market share, and Absolute is pleased with its listener loyalty.

We haven't inspected all the figures for the individual Heart's yet, but Global Radio tells us the network of 33 stations adds 300,000 listeners year-on-year – which generally means the quarter-on-quarter figures weren't as hot.

Andrew Harrison, chief executive of RadioCentre said: "The figures for local commercial radio highlight that local commercial radio is at the top of its game and delighting its audience. With an increase in listening for all radio across the board, and the number of listeners tuning into DAB showing encouraging growth, it's clear that Britain loves radio.”

Digital listening share increased marginally this quarter (11.4 per cent to 13.7), but more houses now have a DAB set, which can only be good news.

Overall, 46 million adults (45.7m last quarter) or 89.6 per cent of the UK population over 15 tuned in to their favourite radio station each week in the last quarter of 2009.

This time round, Kick FM and Kestral are not taking part in the survey, whilst Kingdom FM and Yorkshire Radio have revised TSAs. There are change of names for Pulse Classic Gold to Pulse 2 and The Coast drops the "was Original 106" tag from their station reporting title.

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