RAJAR listening figures for Q3 2011: "In an average week 10.83m adults listen to Radio 4..."
Post categories: RAJAR, Radio 4, Radio 4 Extra, Rajars, audience
10:00, Thursday, 2 February 2012
I have been waiting for my usual Rajar Day telephone call - this time it is long distance as I am on holiday.
It is rather good news so congratulations to everyone who has contributed to our programmes. Chris Hutchings is our new audience guru here on Radio 4 so I thought I would pass you onto him for a more detailed analysis of who has been listening to what and for how long.
Chris Hutchings writes:
The latest RAJAR figures are in for Radio 4 and overall it's good news. In an average week 10.83m adults listen to Radio 4, that's 280,000 more than last quarter, 515,000 more than this time last year and tantalisingly close to the best ever figure of 10.85m. We've also seen a strong performance in terms of share of listening, with the current figure of 12.5% the equal highest that Radio 4 has seen.
News, drama and comedy all continue to attract large audience numbers. Each week 7.15m of us tune in to the Today programme, whilst just under 5m tune in to The Archers.
4 Extra also continues to perform well, attracting 1.55m listeners each week and retaining its position as the UK's No.1 Digital-only station (despite some impressive audience numbers for 6 Music and I Xtra).
Gwyneth Williams is Controller of BBC Radio 4 and BBC Radio 4 Extra
- The Sun: Chris Moyles' war with John Humphrys of Radio 4
- From the BBC Press Office: RAJAR: Radio 6 Music and Radio 1Xtra break records in anniversary year
- More about the RAJARs on the BBC Radio 4 blog
- RAJAR (Radio Joint Audience Research) is jointly owned by the BBC and commercial radio trade body the Radio Centre. Participating listeners are asked to record their radio listening in quarter-hour time blocks for one week.
- Picture, 28 January 2009, by Adam Bowie, used under licence.
Comment number 1.
At 17:03 3rd Feb 2012, carrie wrote:It is a relief to turn to Radio Four, and leave behind entertainment news, reality tv updates, people selling their books, tours, music or films, trivia and endless churning of the same sport news. At a sport news conference a reporter asks a question, creates his own news headline which is then repeated hour after hour on 5Live. The quality of the programming means that to turn to Radio Four we are immediately treated as intelligent adults and thankfully the different programmes supply a comfortable mix and match of everything interesting. That is why 5Live have lost nearly a million listeners and Today's listenership is rising.
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Comment number 2.
At 11:55 4th Feb 2012, Russ wrote:Another solid set of results for R4. The number of hours for R4X however is beginning to drop off: its pool of repeats is beginning to get stale, and more pre-digitalisation gems should be unearthed from the archive.
Russ
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