Action stations - Radio PR and RAJAR audience figures

Published Wednesday 17 May 2006 at 16:40 by Mark Flanagan

Mark Flanagan explains how normally cool-headed radio PRs turn into manic spin doctors when the quarterly RAJAR audience figures come out

Only radio people can truly understand what it feels like just before new audience figures are released. Every radio programmer I know suffers severe palpitations and feels a tight knot in the pit of the stomach in the days and hours before RAJAR.

I suppose waiting for the first set of press reviews following a first night production must provoke similar feelings but reviews at least can be discounted as being subjective, biased or tomorrow’s chip wrapping. RAJAR, on the other hand, is supposed to be the truth. In radio, it’s the behemoth of benchmarks, the mother of all measurements. In commercial radio, RAJAR figures are the trading currency so, if they’re bad, you’ll have the sales director and the finance director calling for your head.

Results day also brings out the worst in radio types. Normally rational and measured members of the PR department suddenly take on the characteristics of Iraq’s former information minister. Even the grimmest set of numbers will be dissected for that one joyful nugget of news that will provide salvation. Yes, we may have lost half our audience this quarter but just look at that rise among 35 to 44-year-old upmarket women. Well, year on year anyway. A station that targets 15-44 will joyfully herald the loss of listeners over 45 as a welcome and much planned consequence of their repositioning. Taken a dive? Then say we didn’t do any marketing that quarter. Got a lift? Must be down to that inspired new breakfast signing.

Most commercial stations are part of larger groups these days and, obviously, the BBC stations are part of a larger network. This is most helpful. If one of our station brands takes a hit, just exclude it from the press release and focus on the brand which has done well. If Radio Five Live on AM has a rough time, simple - just add in the people listening via digital and hey presto. If you are really desperate, add in the numbers for digital-only offshoot Five Live Sports Extra as well. Most journalists, trying to make sense of these figures in a hurry, don’t notice. Radio companies don’t have a choice about the timing of RAJAR publication otherwise they’d be sure to slip them out on busy news days when no one is paying attention. Bury bad news? Surely only politicians do that?

Media reporting of audience figures can be unfair. When I was running LBC in London, the numbers would often go up or down by as many as 70-80,000 between quarterly surveys, despite no changes to our programming or that of our competitors. These wild fluctuations caused much internal angst, head scratching and adverse press. Of course, these figures weren’t real - it was just that the system wasn’t sensitive enough to reflect the performance of what was a relatively small station in a highly competitive market. Including all the digital stations on offer, the average Londoner has around 50 stations to choose from. If you accumulated all the survey data over a 12-month period it was possible to determine audience trends but most journalists wouldn’t do this.

Now, sensibly, all the London radio stations have agreed to publish six-monthly rolling data. This means the results in future will include the diaries for most recent quarter added to the previous three months’ figures, providing a much larger sample and more robust numbers.

GCap Media, owners of London’s Capital Radio, got its retaliation in first. Several weeks ago the company ‘let go’ of Capital’s MD and programme director and admitted that the flagship station was “in intensive care”. This Ratner-style admission cannot have helped the already rock bottom morale at GCap’s Leicester Square HQ and means that failure to deliver rapid improvements can now only be laid at the door of CEO Ralph Bernard. Sure enough, the actual figures, when released on May 11, put Capital in 3rd place behind Heart 106.2 and Magic 105.4 buoyed by Neil Fox, the latter of which puts in barnstorming performance.

Capital took cold comfort from the fact the station remains number one for females aged 15-44 (that Iraqi information minister again) but does that mean it has given up on ever getting back its long-held status as market leader among all adults? New programme director Scott Muller, fresh from Nova in Sydney, has a tougher job on his hands than John Prescott’s image advisor.

The latest RAJARs show that the BBC still holds the best cards. These include generous funding arrangements which allow BBC radio - in particular Radio 2, which is filled with bankers such as Jonathan Ross, Chris Evans and nation’s favourite Terry Wogan - to mop up the best talent and pay them market-busting fees, the lack of external regulation which permits BBC services to shift focus and outflank commercial competitors and the back-up of a BBC machine which uses cross-promotion and the internet to ruthless effect.

In the face of a continued BBC onslaught, commercial radio, which has seen its share slump down again to 42.6%, seems stymied by a form of collective narcissism caused by a messy start to industry consolidation and unremitting negative revenue growth. If we’re honest, the commercial boys and girls spent too much of the last decade fattening up their balance sheets in advance of consolidation and too little time preparing for the seismic changes in technology and listener behaviour which we are now starting to see.

On the face of it, radio listening remains in rude good health. Reach to all stations is steady at 90% and the evidence is that the great British public still turns to radio for entertainment and personalities as well as for live coverage of the big events (witness Radio Five Live’s additional 492,000 listeners this quarter).

The internet may be grabbing more ad revenue these days while TV still grabs the headlines but there is still plenty of life in the old steam radio yet. For the commercial sector, a renewed effort to grow personalities, be less formulaic and predictable and a relentless focus on localness will keep the medium relevant.

• Mark Flanagan is a media and political consultant and can be contacted at mark@peopleinpower.org.uk