Video didn't kill the radio star – audiences are on the rise

THE self-confessed befuddled and bewildered tribe of TOGGS (Terry's Old Geezers and Gals, aka the Terry Wogan radio fan club), seem to have been won over.

At least a fair chunk of them seem to have decided against retuning to another station between 7am and 9.30am since the departure of TOGmeister Terry Wogan at the beginning of the year. Chris Evans will have brought his own army of fans with him, too, of course.

His arrival prompted howls of protest from some, but Evans has helped BBC Radio 2 to reach its biggest ever audience and a record share of the market. The station had 14.57 million listeners in the first three months of this year, up from 13.47 million the previous quarter, and Evans's audience audience was 9.53 million compared to 8.1 million in the last months of Wogan's show – a rise not accounted for by his show being half an hour longer. Far from driving away older listeners, the average age remains 51.

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The digital station 6 Music, which – along with the Asian Network – is threatened with closure at the end of 2011, has seen a rise of almost 50 per cent in audience to a record one million listeners. The axe is swinging over them as part of a strategy review by the BBC, and consultations on the plan are set to end in June. Campaigners against the closure of 6 Music, which plays alternative pop and indie music, hope the latest ratings (and two coveted Sony radio awards won this week) will help to reverse the decision.

The spike in audience for 6 Music is thought to have been caused by the publicity surrounding the threatened closure, with many more listeners perhaps having not really registered the station's existence before the furore. The BBC argued that audiences were unacceptably low considering its running costs.

Meanwhile, RAJAR, which compiles radio listening figures, says 90 per cent of the UK population aged 15+ are regularly listening to the radio – that's an all-time high of 46.5 million adults, three-quarters of a million up in a year. The number of listeners owning a DAB digital radio has grown 13 per cent in a year, and radio listening via mobile phone is steadily rising, by half a million in a year. Although the BBC's stations command the lion's share of the radio audience, the fortunes of some commercial stations are improving, with slipping advertising revenues now having stabilised.

So what's happening? Wasn't radio thought some years ago to be the dinosaur that would lose out colossally to the huge explosion in TV channels?

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"Rewind to years ago when many homes had only one FM radio in the kitchen," says Chris Curtis of Broadcast magazine. "How different things are now, when we can listen to radio via Freeview on the TV, on digital radio and via our PC or laptop.

"Most mobile phones now have an FM radio application, so there are many ways to sample what's happening in radio while you are doing other things.

"I don't think, despite the latest figures, that the BBC will do an about-face over 6 Music. As well as cost reasons, commercial radio always had a difficult battle against the BBC because it has all the bases covered, and there is pressure to give them more of a look-in."

Martin Cooper, senior lecturer in radio at Huddersfield University and former head of news at BBC Radio York, says many 18 -year-olds he teaches do not initially have any appreciation of what radio is.

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"They have to do it as part of their course, and find out that it is great fun. More young people in general are also discovering radio because of phones – 30.4 per cent of 15-24 year-olds listen to the radio via their mobile."

Cooper says many listeners have a radio on as a secondary activity, their attention tuning in and out, and often using a radio simply as company in the background. Surely that is less true if a listener is choosing to block out the rest of the world using earpieces? Increasing numbers of listeners surely can't only be down simply to an increase in ways to access radio, either. Producers would like to think that improving figures have something to do with quality.

"True. Still, though, some listeners probably have the radio on a lot but pay more attention to certain content, for example, if an argument breaks out during a phone-in. Some audiences – particularly those listening to a play on Radio 4, for example, will be concentrating intently.

"Many stations have reinvented themselves to tap into what listeners actually need – and the success of Radio 2 is that it is no longer seen as just the home of niches of folk and jazz. It still does those, but has become much more mainstream.

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"Let's not forget, either, that there are some great commercial stations, including Real Radio Yorkshire, whose Dixie and Gayle

breakfast show has just won a Sony Award."

Are the airwaves overly dominated by the BBC? "I don't think so," says Cooper. "We in Yorkshire have quality commercial stations like Real Radio, Galaxy and Pulse, but we also need the news, talk and information we get from Radios Sheffield, Humberside, York and Leeds. We look to the BBC to provide a benchmark."

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