It’s certainly been an ‘interesting’ quarter, to say the least, for the continuing game of ‘musical chairs’ among London’s commercial stations.
The obvious winner this time is Magic 105.4 which dominates weekday daytimes quite convincingly and doesn’t do too badly at weekends either; especially breakfast. It’s also overtaken BBC Radio 2 in reach.
Also worth noting is how Kiss beats Capital for much of the day after breakfast and, it has to be asked, what has happened to Heart at breakfast-time? A year ago it was a major player at that time of day but now it seems to have lost its way.
The next quarter is going to be interesting as far as breakfast is concerned as to whether commercial radio picks up disaffected ex-Moyles listeners.
Meanwhile LBC 97.3 continues to be ahead of the pack at night-time and it’s interesting to see that Steve Allen’s early breakfast show now has the highest share of listening in the capital between 0400-0600 – beating even market-leading Radio 4 at that time.
(Click on charts to enlarge)
Note: Figures used in all charts for Absolute are for ‘Total Absolute Radio (London)
Survey period – 25th June – 16th September 2012. Source: Rajar/Ipsos Mori/RSMB.
As usual I issue my ‘health warning’ about not taking a single quarter’s figures in isolation – a year-on-year comparison is the better one – you’ll find the charts for Q3/2011 here and Q2/2012 here.
There is also, as always, some excellent coverage and commentary from James Cridland, Matt Deegan and Adam Bowie, as well as Media UK and Radio Today.
Paul Easton 