UBC Media Group has reported audience gains for Oneword Radio, the national digital station which it owns jointly with Channel 4 Television.
Oneword has shown an increase in both its reach and listening hours in the latest official RAJAR audience figures published today, compared with the same period a year ago.
Its weekly reach in the latest RAJAR report (Q1 2006) has grown by 9% to 132,000
(Q1 2005: 121,000), with total listening hours up 4% (Q1 2005: 393,000, Q1 2006: 408,000). (Source – Rajar/Ipsos MORI.)
In the same report, the Classic Gold Digital network of AM radio stations recorded a 4% year-on-year increase in the average amount of time spent
listening to the network across the UK. (Q1 2005: 9.3 hours per listener per week, Q1 2006: 9.7 hours per listener per week.)
However CGDL continues to face challenges in the areas where it broadcasts on the analogue Medium Wave frequencies, where its reach declined to just under half a million listeners. (Q1 2005: 558,000, Q1 2006: 485,000.)
The CGDL network as a whole is now recording 7,069,000 total hours of listening per week. (Q1 2005: 7,386,000.)
Commenting on the RAJAR figures, Simon Cole, Chief Executive of UBC said:
‘I’m delighted by the latest figures for Oneword Radio, which has seen significant benefits from the increased support of our partners at Channel Four.
In recent weeks Oneword has introduced an exciting new weekend schedule, which is the result of increased investment in the station, and we expect to see this reflected in further audience boosts in due course.
As expected, analogue listening to CGDL is in decline. This is still a period of major change for listening to stations such as CGDL, which have historically been reliant on the poorer quality transmission signal of Medium Wave. For CGDL,
the future lies clearly in the digital world, and the process of transferring our audience to digital platforms continues.’