Heart, Capital and Smooth still UK’s top commercial radio brands

According to the latest listening figures, commercial radio is on the up, but its no so for the BBC.

Industry body, RAJAR’s Q1 figures released today, show that Heart, Capital and Smooth continue to rate as the top three commercial radio brands in the UK.

Heart has its highest ever audience figure with 11.2m listeners each week and Breakfast with Jamie Theakston & Amanda Holden is the biggest commercial radio show in the UK and commercial breakfast show, with 4 million weekly listeners.

Greatest Hits Radio Network also has a record audience of 5.3m, with Simon Mayo at 2m, adding half a million listeners to his Drivetime show – a 34.8% increase compared to the same period last year.

The “star of the show” must be Boom Radio, which has doubled its audience year-on-year, with 635,000 adults now listening each week.

It’s not been such good news for the BBC with Radio 4 losing 1.2million listeners in 12 months and the Today Programme down 800,000 listeners in the past year.

BBC Radio 5 Live now has a reach of 5.1m listeners – down almost half a million this quarter.

While Radio 2 has lost a few listeners compared to last year, its audience is up slightly over the last three months to 14.46m listeners, with 7.26m tuning in for The Zoe Ball Breakfast Show, also up slightly on the last survey.

Elsewhere, the much talked-about painful demise of BBC Local Radio continues, with the network in England showing some ups and downs, but overall audiences are down seven per cent from 5.6m to 5.2m weekly listeners in the last three months.

Commercial radio has 38.7m listening each week, compared with 32.2m listening to the BBC.