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#RAJAR - Global celebrates best-ever figures

By James Cridland for media.info
Posted 28 October 2015, 8.01pm edt

Matt Deegan




Global, the biggest commercial radio broadcaster in the UK, is celebrating their best-ever figures.

As a whole, Global-owned stations now have 22.06m listeners. That's up markedly from last quarter (21.1m) and the previous record (21.4m, in Q1 2014). Hours per listener has also increased to 8.8; above average over the last ten years for the stations (though clearly Global's changed rather a lot in that time).

The company claims highest-ever figures for Heart, Capital, and Smooth - some of whom are run under licence by Communicorp UK and Adventure Radio.

Classic FM appears to be relatively stable since December 2011. LBC is also static (staying on a highest ever audience).

Xfm's last figures - it was replaced by Radio X after this survey completed - were an amusing 1.049m listeners (the station broadcast on 104.9 in London). Xfm bowed out with, um, its best-ever figures in seven years. We'll get Radio X's first figures next time.

Gold has declined slightly (it'll probably rise again next survey, after it was rolled out on many local multiplexes to replace Xfm). Chill and The Arrow are not measured by RAJAR.

Press release

RECORD NUMBERS FOR GLOBAL BRANDS….. THE UK’S TOP 4 RADIO BRANDS

HEART BRAND ACHIEVES HIGHEST EVER FIGURES WITH MORE THAN 9 MILLION PEOPLE TUNING IN EVERY WEEK

CAPITAL BRAND ACHIEVES HIGHEST EVER FIGURES WITH MORE THAN 8 MILLION PEOPLE TUNING IN EVERY WEEK

SMOOTH BRAND ACHIEVES HIGHEST EVER FIGURES WITH MORE THAN 5.5 MILLION PEOPLE TUNING IN EVERY WEEK

GLOBAL ACHIEVES HIGHEST EVER FIGURES WITH 24 MILLION PEOPLE TUNING INTO A GLOBAL STATION EVERY WEEK

GLOBAL ACHIEVES HIGHEST EVER SHARE WITH MORE THAN 218 MILLION HOURS CONSUMED ACROSS ALL GLOBAL STATIONS EVERY WEEK, PULLING FURTHER AWAY FROM ITS COMPETITORS

DAVE BERRY & LISA SNOWDON CONTINUE THEIR REIGN AS LONDON’S NUMBER 1 COMMERCIAL BREAKFAST SHOW WITH 1M LISTENERS

LONDON

  • Capital London is the number 1 commercial station for hours and share (10.8m up from 9m last quarter) and share (5.1% up from 4.2% last quarter) beating all its commercial competitors and Radio 1
  • Dave Berry & Lisa Snowdon continue to win the battle for the commercial breakfast top slot with 1 million listeners beating the competition by more than 200,000 listeners

CAPITAL

  • The Capital brand has achieved record figures, reaching more than 8m people every week and extending its lead as the UK’s number 1 hit music brand
  • Capital Xtra has reached an all time high with 1.1m people tuning in every week – its biggest number to date

HEART

  • Heart is by far the UK’s largest commercial radio brand with its highest ever listening reach – 9.1m listeners (up 284,000 this quarter) tuning in every week

SMOOTH

  • The Smooth brand now has 5.5m listeners every week with the new Smooth Extra attracting 930,000 listeners every week on digital radio

CLASSIC FM

  • Classic FM now reaches 5.5m people (up 211,000 this quarter) every week

LBC

  • LBC maintains its highest ever reach with 1.5m listeners across the country

Ashley Tabor, founder & executive president of Global, said: “This is one of our best RAJARs to date, if not our best ever. With Global overall, and the Heart, Capital and Smooth brands all achieving their highest ever numbers, and Capital once again London’s number 1 breakfast show, what more could you ask for! To say I’m incredibly proud of the team at Global today would be a huge understatement – these results are an indication of just how hard every Globaller works to build radio brands that our listeners love and I’d like to thank them all sincerely today.”

Richard Park, group executive director & director of broadcasting at Global, said: “This is a great result for Global as we reach more listeners than ever before. It’s always pleasing to see strong growth from across the portfolio. While Heart and Capital continue to be the UK’s most popular radio brands, I’m particularly delighted to see both Classic FM and Smooth joining them by pulling in 5.5 million listeners each.”

More information

Global
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James Cridland — James runs media.info, and is a radio futurologist: a consultant, writer and public speaker who concentrates on the effect that new platforms and technology are having on the radio business. He also publishes a free daily newsletter about podcasting, Podnews, and a weekly radio trends newsletter.