RAJAR: Kiss posts highest ever reach

Bauer’s Kiss now has 4.4m listeners across the UK, an increase of 7.2% over the year, and in London its reach of 1.958m puts the station third commercial just behind Magic but above Heart.

Magic 105.4 is the commercial market leader in terms of audience share, with its total hours nearly 2m more than the nearest commercial rival.

Kiss – which picked up Sony Gold awards for its breakfast show and programmer (Andy Roberts) this week – now has more listeners in the capital than Radio 1, but is still more than 300,000 listeners behind Global Radio’s Capital FM.

Bauer says it has the commercial number one for reach and share in 19 of the 21 markets where it has stations in the group’s ‘Place Portfolio’ – including Manchester, Newcastle and Edinburgh.

Key 103 has 50,000 more listeners than Capital FM Manchester in the latest book – a reversal of the position this time last year, while Key’s sister station Magic 1152 saw a 16.7% rise in reach year-on-year. There was also a strong performance from Liverpool’s Magic 1548 which saw its audience size rise 26% compared with Q1/11.

Metro and TFM were both up 5% although CFM saw a drop in listener numbers by 23% to 87,000 – its lowest audience in nearly three years. Hallam FM’s audience is up 4% year-on-year, while Radio Aire is down 16% and Viking down 2%.

Forth One is up 18% in terms of reach year on year, but its sister AM network Forth 2 drops by 20%. Across the M8 in Glasgow, both Clyde 1 and Clyde 2 have lost audience over the last 12 months. The FM station is down 11% to 517,000, while the AM service has lost more than a quarter of its audience over the year.

For Bauer’s digital-only stations – heat radio recorded its highest ever reach (up 14.4% year-on-year to 716,000 listeners) and over 3 million hours for the first time. The Hits Radio is celebrating being the biggest digital commercial radio station in the UK, now bigger than 1Xtra, with over 1 million listeners whilst Smash Hits also beat 1Xtra with their hours having increased by over 500,000 year-on-year.

Dee Ford, group managing director radio, Bauer Media, said: “Bauer’s Place Portfolio continues to dominate over its nearest commercial rival, with a clear strategic focus on tailor made, locally relevant content for each market around the UK. I am particularly pleased that Magic 105.4, Kiss, heat and The Hits have seen such tremendous growth in hours listened, demonstrating that carefully crafted content creates better engagement for our listeners. A special mention must go to the record-breaking RAJAR results for Kiss, which caps a great week for the station after winning two Golds at the Sony Awards.”

Graham Bryce, Managing Director of Bauer Radio Scotland, told us: “Bauer Radio continues to be the dominant radio group across Scotland, remaining the most listened to station in every market. We entertain and inform a combined 1.6 million adults, 40% of the population, each week.”