Radio looking very healthy indeed

Business unit head at The MediaShop, Richard Lord, takes a look at the latest RAMS figures, and finds South Africa radio looking very healthy indeed.

The total past seven day radio audience is up by 4.3% vs. the same diary period a year ago; that is an additional 1 292 million listeners, and if we compare this latest diary with the previous release in December we see that audiences have increased by 158,000 people (or 0.5%).

Looking at the split between community and commercial radio stations, community radio showed an increase of 467,000 listeners (5.6%) year on year, whilst commercial radio audiences grew by 1,095 million people (3.7%). This growth has predominantly come form Gauteng: Soweto and Johannesburg.

Across the 227 radio stations covered, the average time spent listening has decreased marginally from 3h31m per day to 3h30m.

The province who listens to the most radio is the Free State on 4h15m per day and the province who listens the least is the Western Cape who only listen for 2h46m.

People’s loyalty to “their” radio station also remains high with people only listening to an average of 2.0 stations per week on a national basis. Gautengers are the least loyal listening to an average of 2.3 stations, whilst people from the Western and Northern Cape are the most loyal only listening to 1.8 stations per week. One must also take into account that there is more choice in Gauteng!

So who are the winners and losers?

Biggest audience increases (past seven days diary on diary)

Talk Radio 702 +14.5%

Good Hope FM +13.6%

Heart 104.9 FM +10.7%

SAFM +9.5%

94.5 KFM +6.0%

Biggest decreases

OFM -5.3%

5FM -5.6%

Kaya FM -9.5%

Cape Talk -12.6%