Commercial Radio Listening Beats the BBC for another quarter!

Kisstory remains at the top of the digital-only commercial stations chart

Here are the radio listening headlines from the RAJAR release for Q3 2017. All statistics are for weekly listening unless otherwise stated.

	49.1million (90%) adults listen to radio every week, and 65% of adults listen to commercial radio.
	Commercial Radio remains in front of the BBC for another quarter with a weekly reach of 35.6 million. The BBC’s figures have decreased slightly since last quarter, now with a weekly reach of 34.9 million.
	The networked stations have again delivered high reach with listening figures still well into the millions; Heart Brand 9.5m, Capital Brand 8.5m, Kiss Network 5.7m, Smooth Brand 5.7m, Absolute Network 4.5m and, Magic Network 3.7m.
	Capital is London’s most popular commercial station yet again with 2.1m listeners, beating Kiss (1.9m) to the top spot. Magic and Heart have switched places, with Magic just snatching third place (1.54m) compared to Heart’s 1.51 million listeners. Clyde 1 remains the most listened to commercial radio station in Scotland with 543,000 weekly listeners and in Northern Ireland, Cool FM has increased it’s listenership by 21,000 listeners, now reaching 495,000 weekly listeners.
	The Capital London Breakfast show remains the clear winner for another quarter in the London Breakfast show battle with 1.11 million listeners, increasing its listenership by 29,000 listeners on last quarter. Kiss Breakfast with Ricky, Melvin and Charlie remains in second place but has gone down slightly from last quarter (914,000) to 900,000 listeners. LBC takes the third spot again with 716,000 - a big decrease from last quarter (906,000). Magic (659,000) and Heart (490,000) make up the top 5. On a national scale, Kiss remains as the biggest Breakfast show with over 2 million weekly listeners across the country, followed by the Absolute Radio Network with 1.9 million weekly listeners.
	Digital figures remain stable with 33 million people (61% of the population) now tuning in to radio every week via a digitally enabled receiver (DAB, Online/App and Digital TV). In an average week, digital listening accounts for 511 million hours. DAB has the largest share, with 74%/376 million hours followed by Online – 16%/83 million hours and DTV – 10%/ 51 million hours. 61.6% of Adults 15+ claim to own a DAB set at home – this figure continues to grow steadily year on year (57% in Q3 2016)
	Sports fans are continuing to listen to radio for updates, with talkSPORT posting an increase of circa 300,000 listeners and now reaching 2.9 million listeners every week. talkSPORT2 has also increased slightly this quarter, with a weekly reach of 342,000.
	In the Digital-only charts, Kisstory continues to lead the way with 1.8m weekly listeners, closely followed by Absolute 80s, which remains at 1.5 million listeners. 80s music seems to be popular with third place going to Heart 80s, who have achieved an impressive second RAJAR posting of 1.08 million!
	In terms of how we listen, 28% of adults listen to radio via a mobile phone or tablet and 8.7 million adults claim to listen to radio via headphones at least once a month.

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