Latest RAJARs

[Serial_Apologist]

Q: impact of fine weather? Do people get out and about and listen less to R3 in hot weather?

Well, last year July was hot, too.

[Bryn]

from the RAJAR site:

RAJAR measures live radio listening in the UK ...

How many of us now listen to Radio 3 principally via the Listen Again facility of the iPlayer? My Radio 3 is almost exclusively via that non-RAJARed mode these days.

[french frank]

Q: impact of fine weather? Do people get out and about and listen less to R3 in hot weather?

You have to find specific reasons why R3's reach should drop significantly. BBC listening is down a little (though not Radio 1's or R4/4 Extra's or Radio 5 Live's), but commercial radio listening was up, Classic FM certainly up on last quarter. What is the 'weather' pattern?

It's not only that people were listening less last quarter, but a significant number weren't listening at all.

The caveat pertains as usual: a single quarter's figures have to be taken with a pinch of salt. But if the figures had been UP, they would have had a mention on Radio 3's Breakfast news, so it's only fair that we should turn the screw when they're down - at least we try to present a more rounded picture than Radio 3; we try to understand what's happening.

[Sir Velo]

Q: impact of fine weather? Do people get out and about and listen less to R3 in hot weather?

Preferring to stay in and listen to other stations? Seems a bit unlikely. Remember the share is relative.

[antongould]

Was a good Breakfast performance last Q explained by the change from SMP to Wor Clemmie? Presumably the fall is due to Clemmie's temporary replacement by TreeLawn and Ian Skelly?

[french frank]

Was a good Breakfast performance last Q explained by the change from SMP to Wor Clemmie? Presumably the fall is due to Clemmie's temporary replacement by TreeLawn and Ian Skelly?

'Good' was only relative: it was 673K (CBH), whereas the same Q the previous year it was 704K (SMP), so that always a bit of a trick with mirrors.

The presence of a single presenter (all of whom normally do less than half the quarter - alternating, and doing either weekdays or weekends - is going to affect the quarter's figure drastically, unless you believe they have a huge following which faithfully turns on to listen to them, but listens to something else for the rest (majority) of the month ...I daresay someone will try to argue that point of view, but it would run counter to the various comments that have been made in places various

[Zucchini]

You have to find specific reasons why R3's reach should drop significantly. BBC listening is down a little (though not Radio 1's or R4/4 Extra's or Radio 5 Live's), but commercial radio listening was up, Classic FM certainly up on last quarter.

I don't think you are following good practice here. You are comparing Apr-Jun 2014 figures with Jan-Mar 2014 figures. You are therefore deliberately ignoring the observed and agreed seasonal variations in radio listening.

It is less bad to compare Apr-Jun 2014 figures with those for the same period in 2013 which I think report:

Radio 3's reach appears to be 5.6% down
Classic FM's weekly reach appears to be 3.1% down
Radio 4's reach appears to be 4.1% down

So far so good, really. But total weekly listening hours - the prime measure of audience demand for a station's output -are a bit gruesome:

Radio 3's gross weekly hours appear to be 11.0% down
Classic FM's gross weekly hours appear to be 0.9% up
Radio 4's gross weekly hours appear to be 4.4% down

Radio 3's Breakfast figure (526k) is 14.5% down and Classic FM's 1779k) 2.6% up

Forget about inevitable sample errors and explanations for a minute - we are well accustomed to endless smallish peaks and troughs - but in the long run nothing much seems to happen.

I think the significant thing is that 2 million weekly listeners is a memorable figure. I recall that the BBC Trust focussed on this and said that 2 million is about the right figure and (by implication) is required. Radio 3's management will not be looked upon kindly (or it's budgetary proposals) if it doesn't get back up very quickly and stay there (and also find a way to explain or resolve its very real Breakfast problem).

(my calculations were done v quickly & may have errors)

[Russ]

How many of us now listen to Radio 3 principally via the Listen Again facility of the iPlayer? My Radio 3 is almost exclusively via that non-RAJARed mode these days.

4.2m of adults use listen-again. However, the amount (hours) of radio being time-shifted is small - about 1.5% of total listening hours, or about 2.8% if podcasts are taken into account. The main messages are:

- the live schedule still rules (and consequently obsesses Station Controllers);
- non-online radio (steam and DAB) dominates online consumption.

The BBC publish figures for online use (in their monthly iPlayer performance pack), and for March for example, of the 72m requests for radio content, 79% of those requests are for live, and 21% for listen-again. (That 4:1 ratio has remained consistent for quite a while.) Unfortunately, the BBC no longer publish per-station online consumption figures, so the answer to your R3-specific question remains elusive, but time-shifting for music stations is believed to be considerably less, maybe by a factor of 3 or 4, than that for speech radio. For R3, whilst not an exception that generalised pan-BBC picture, the last figures available (April 2012) indicate the ratio of live stream requests to listen-again requests is in the 2:1 region. (In that month, R3's 'online weekly reach' was 130k - about 6.8% of the RAJAR reach figure.)

The 2.8% time-shifted hours is not yet significant enough to bother RAJAR's live-only figures, but the time-shifted amount was thought to be 1% of the total consumed hours only a couple of years ago, so can be taken to be growing at a very considerable rate.

I think the other significant factor about time-shifting is that, unlike the RAJAR live-only stats, where a mere 5-minute 'casual listen' will qualify for a tick in the RAJAR box ("I admit the Archers was on when I was doing the washing-up and making a cup of tea"), a listen-again request reflects a more considered choice and tends to result in the whole programme being listened to.

Russ

P.S. Like you, I am abnormal - I reckon my time-shift to live ratio is about 70%/30%.

[french frank]

[Answer to Zucchini]

Well, the response was to DracoM's comments about the weather: I can't in fact remember what the weather was like last summer, but I thought he was referring to a seasonal change, which is less marked (theoretically at least) year on year than compared with the previous 'season'/quarter. But in any case the main comparison was with the other stations, so q-o-q IS valid. Why would Radio 3's audience stop listening because of the good weather if listeners to other stations didn't stop listening? Do they have different weather? Why would ALL BBC listening be down, while ALL commercial was up, specifically because of the weather?

Other than that, your comments seem about right. Not sure what Radio 3's 'budgetary proposals' are, but one point which I don't know that you would agree with, and certainly the BBC shows no sign (yet) of acknowledging, is that Radio 3's comparatively poor showing is connected with its stated efforts to 'welcome new listeners' and its consequent neglect of its existing audience's preferences.

[Sir Velo]

I don't think you are following good practice here. You are comparing Apr-Jun 2014 figures with Jan-Mar 2014 figures. You are therefore deliberately ignoring the observed and agreed seasonal variations in radio listening.

That's perfectly acceptable when you're comparing audience share rather than absolute numbers which is what is being done here. Unless you're suggesting that Radio 3 listeners are such a lively crew that they are renowned for never being in during the summer to listen to the radio and hence the share takes a dive; while those well known stay at home Radio 1 & 6 listeners always boost that station's listenership in the summer?

[Dave2002]

'Good' was only relative: it was 673K (CBH), whereas the same Q the previous year it was 704K (SMP), so that always a bit of a trick with mirrors.

The presence of a single presenter (all of whom normally do less than half the quarter - alternating, and doing either weekdays or weekends - is going to affect the quarter's figure drastically, unless you believe they have a huge following which faithfully turns on to listen to them, but listens to something else for the rest (majority) of the month ...I daresay someone will try to argue that point of view, but it would run counter to the various comments that have been made in places various

Is there a "not" missing somewhere in those sentences?

Obviously presenters are "not" important for R3, yet that hugely imaginative, talented, creative individual known as Chris Evans has been given considerable credit for other stations.

[french frank]

Is there a "not" missing somewhere in those sentences?

Yes. And your point is ...?

Well, yes, 'talent' (aka presenters) on mass audience stations are credited with building up larger audiences, but changes tend not to occur suddenly, as soon as they take over. And it's less complicated because they tend to be the only regular presenter on "their" show, unlike of Radio 3' peak-time progs.

[Zucchini]

Yes FF and Velo are right. Sorry. There are two concurrent and meandering threads and I thought someone, somewhere (probability being FF) was assessing Q2 performance by comparison with Q1, which I would not like.

[french frank]

Yes FF and Velo are right. Sorry. There are two concurrent and meandering threads and I thought someone, somewhere (probability being FF) was assessing Q2 performance by comparison with Q1, which I would not like.

But it's what 'people' do. E.g. "Figures released this week [Q1 2014], showed that the breakfast show has added 130,000 new listeners since the arrival of Ms Burton-Hill..."

Since that was published last May, that seems to be comparing the March 2014 Breakfast figure of 673K with the previous (Q4 2013) quarter of 542K, Ms B-H having taken over from SMP in the December; ergo the new figures were for her first complete quarter. If, on the other hand, the March 2014 figure had been compared with the March 2013 figure (704K) - as you and I would advocate - "she" had actually "lost" the station 30,000 listeners. But neither narrative really holds any water: it's a prime example of what discredits statistics - not the figures, but the people who try to exploit them for their own purposes.

It is even pure invention to claim that Radio 3 'added 130,000 new listeners' at all. That isn't how statistics of this kind should be described.

[DracoM]

And how do they know they are 'new' listeners?
AAMOI, do we know what CD Review's figures are i.e. Saturday a.m.?

If CDM ever came back, they would add a multitude of flag-waving "new" listeners in about 30 seconds.
Stephen Johnson and Jonathan Swain. Yes, please.