Radio listening via digital platforms stands at around a quarter of UK listeners in the UK according the data published by RAJAR for Q1. DAB accounts for 15.1%; DTV 4.0% and Internet 2.9%.
Its shows the challenge that the broadcast industry faces in persuading consumers to shift from terrestrial broadcast as it heads towards digital switchover in 2015 – and presumably the opportunity for consumer electronics companies to flog digital radios.
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Here’s some data that challenges the progress of social media.
Consumer appetite for radio – like TV – is at an all time high. According to RAJAR data (PDF) for the first quarter of 2010 46.5m adults tune into radio each week in the UK.
You thought that social media was killing mainstream media? No chance.
But radio remains a crude instrument to communicate with an audience. People may be listening but are they engaged?
David Cushman made this point on Twitter in response to a tweet I posted about the RAJAR data.
“Listener figures are more like newspaper readership versus sales. Downloading [is a] more active choice,” he said.
Neville Hobson commented that podcasting is the social media equivalent of radio. It’s targeted and engages an audience directly. But herein lies an issue; downloading doesn’t necessarily equate to listening
“As a podcaster I’m far more interested in actual listener numbers than how many downloads,” said Hobson.
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Here’s another contrary story about media audiences. Conventional wisdom says that people are switching off the TV and radio and moving to the web. Wrong.
The hard numbers tell a different story. Audiences are fragmenting from terrestrial broadcasts to digital broadcast. Where there are falls they are so small that they could be dismissed within a margin of error.
Radio listening in the UK is close to saturation with 89.2 per cent of the UK population tuning into the radio each week. Listener numbers are up year-on-year for Q3 at 45.7 million but down from 46.3 million in Q2 2009.
Listening to radio via a digital platform has risen 11 per cent year-on-year with 17 million people tuning in to radio via a digitally enabled set each week up from 15.9 million in Q3 2008.
There are no real surprises in the TV market.
TV audiences are fragmenting from terrestrial TV to other platforms. Audiences are down almost one per cent year-on-year with the greatest falls seen by ITV, Channel 4 and Channel 5. BARB lumps non terrestrial channels into a catch all category called Other Viewing. This was the only category to see year-on-year growth (6.74 per cent).
The Ad Contrarian carried a typically brutal analysis in a recent post called The Death Watch Continues (via @nbishop).
“It’s been 5 years now. All the pundits and media geniuses have assured us TV is dead. All the web maniacs and new age marketing gurus have promised us it’s dead. All the social media snake oil salesmen and ad agency bozos have guaranteed us it’s dead. Apparently, the only people who aren’t convinced of this are the viewing public.”
It’s a different story in the newspaper industry of course.
Accepted wisdom says that the audience for mainstream media is in decline in an inverse relationship to the growth in our appetite for social media. But it simplify isn’t the case. Mainstream media consumption is on the rise.
I’ve spent the last few weeks unpicking the latest audited audience statistics to find out what is really happening in mainstream media-land in the UK.
The most recent audience figures from BARB (broadcast TV), RAJAR (radio) and ABC (newspapers) show a decline in our appetite for print but year-on-year rises elsewhere. And while print audiences may be falling, ABCe figures report unprecedented audiences on the web.
Herein lies the issue and the opportunity for mainstream media publishers: audiences aren’t in decline but they are fragmenting across the web. Despite the rise of Facebook, Twitter and YouTube people remain firmly loyal to mainstream media brands.
This is a narrative about an industry undergoing a radical shift in its search for a new business model following the breakdown of the advertising and subscription funded models.
I haven’t got any answers but here are the actual numbers.
Table: Newspapers online (ABCe via MediaTel and Press Gazette – August 2009)
Table: Newspapers print (ABC via MediaTel and Press Gazette – August 2009)
Table: Television multi-channel viewing summary (BARB – 20 Sept to 28 Sept)
Table: Radio (RAJAR – Q2 2009)
