Latest RAJARs

[aka Calum Da Jazbo]

perhaps the more important finding is that all other BBC radio stations grew but R3 shrank .... and R3 share is 1.1% v Classic FM 3.5% ...

[french frank]

It is unwise to read too much into these averages but it does seem that the December quarter is usually not particularly good.

Very useful, johnb. Dec quarter not particularly good, no. But this chart seems to show that today's figures are lower than the average for any of the quarters.

[Gordon]

This is what those quarters look like over the whole 1999-2013 period. Data from jb's #208 and this to cf his #210.



And this is what the quarters look like against the whole period means for each quarter ie calculate the means [ie average] for each quarter over the period 1999-2013 and then plot each quarter's individual reach less its mean [that gives the deviation] as a % of that mean. The patterns for each quarter come out in more detail eg June's poor showing also shows small deviations in the first few years. The trends in 2006-2009 shows everything dropping!!



Lies, D****d lies and Statistics!

[amateur51]

Any point in plotting these data against quarterly rainfall?

[Gordon]

Ah, well ams, the cunning plan that RW has for R3 is hidden in there somewhere - if only we could find it. Easier to find the Higgs Boson!

[french frank]

Crumbs. I've just read the BBC news story. This is chutzpah:

"Radio 3 controller Roger Wright said the station's audience had remained "stable" since Rajar figures first began, adding that it was "good to see our Breakfast audience build on last quarter's figure".

Two points: ten years ago Radio 3 reported to the Charter review that the station's reach was 2.3 million (that would be 2.29m in March 2004). In March 2008 (to stay with the same quarter), it was 1.793m, a difference of 495,000, a drop of 22%. That is "stable"? Even the latest figure is 13% down on this time ten years ago. And that has been ten long years of trying every trick to attract new listeners Right aim, wrong strategy.

As for Breakfast, it 'gained' 9,000 listeners on an extremely low figure, which is within the sampling margin of error so it might in reality have dropped to its lowest level since Nu-Breakfast began. Bumping along the bottom.

[french frank]

I don't know where this bit of spin/wishful thinking came from in the Indy:

"The BBC said the Radio 3 audience figure frequently fluctuates around the 2 million mark and normally falls back after the Proms season.

"Figures for the Radio 3 breakfast show have however begun to rise since Clemency Burton-Hill took over a weekday role in December."

I think not. CB-H started on 2 December, and the quarter ended on the 14th. No way would there have been a noticeable increase in those ten days, and even if there had been she would have needed an awful lot of friends tuning in to affect the average weekly figure over the entire 13 weeks. Again, the difference between 533,000 last quarter and 542,000 this quarter is small it probably only amounted to one extra person in the sample.

[amateur51]

I don't know where this bit of spin/wishful thinking came from in the Indy:

"The BBC said the Radio 3 audience figure frequently fluctuates around the 2 million mark and normally falls back after the Proms season.

"Figures for the Radio 3 breakfast show have however begun to rise since Clemency Burton-Hill took over a weekday role in December."

I think not. CB-H started on 2 December, and the quarter ended on the 14th. No way would there have been a noticeable increase in those ten days, and even if there had been she would have needed an awful lot of friends tuning in to affect the average weekly figure over the entire 13 weeks. Again, the difference between 533,000 last quarter and 542,000 this quarter is small it probably only amounted to one extra person in the sample.

You mentioned chutzpah, french frank.

I think the word is 'b*llocks'

Bumping along the bottom, clueless and arrogant with it.

[Gordon]

Crumbs. I've just read the BBC news story......Roger Wright said the station's audience had remained "stable" since Rajar figures first began.....

Would that be the stable that the horse has bolted from?

[amateur51]

Would that be the stable that the horse has bolted from?

[french frank]

And another thing!

"Radio 3 controller Roger Wright said the station's audience had remained "stable" since Rajar figures first began ..."

Well, I have figures going back to 1995, and in Quarter 1 Radio 3 had a reach of 2.401m. That figure is not directly comparable with the latest figure of 1.992m, but on the other hand, it isn't really possible to say that 2.401m and 1.992m are, mutatis mutandis, roughly the same.

In fact, I just found an even earlier figure, for Q1 1993: 2.709m. And I stress that a different data collection methodology, as well as certain output changes, means the two figures can't be compared. But it is IMPOSSIBLE to say - in any meaningful way, that the figures are stable. More gobbledigook to fool the Powers That Be.

[DracoM]

The terrifying thing is that we [well. FF and Co] can so easily pick these stats apart and show the truth, but the BBC Trust and the DG presumably swallow RW's spiel whole? Can a Management team be so demonstrably inaccurate in assessing its own performance and THEN simply lie about it to the press, and STILL get away with it?

Why not send these stats + commentary to John Whittingdale, Chair of the Parliamentary CMS Cttee?

[antongould]

The terrifying thing is that we [well. FF and Co] can so easily pick these stats apart and show the truth, but the BBC Trust and the DG presumably swallow RW's spiel whole? Can a Management team be so demonstrably inaccurate in assessing its own performance and THEN simply lie about it to the press, and STILL get away with it?

Why not send these stats + commentary to John Whittingdale, Chair of the Parliamentary CMS Cttee?

Yes sir a management team can, in these enlightened times - take the company I work for.....please take the company I work for....

[french frank]

And here's the latest spiel.

I liked: 'However, Mr Wright said in more than 15 years of running the BBC station, he had “never been put under any pressure over ratings”.

Writing in The Telegraph, he said: "On the contrary – a recent director-general expressed dismay when I told him that figures for our breakfast show had gone up." '

The express aim of the Breakfast Show is to attract new listeners. How could the figures NOT go up if the strategy had been successful? Was it perhaps Mr Wright's strategy that caused the D-G's 'dismay'?

[french frank]

And here's another:

"Radio 3's job is to enrich Britain's cultural fabric"