please empty your brain below

I now listen almost entirely to internet radio, with a selection of house/trance/electronic music stations mostly via Filtermusic. I like this type of music, which can be difficult to find on conventional radio, but there's another obvious attraction; no interruptions by commercials or news summaries.
Blimey, the only radio stations we listen to live, Jack FM and Planet Rock, appear nowhere. We must be really niche in liking the best quality 80's stuff, classic rock and a minimum or complete absence of DJ wittering.
It's interesting to see Bauer's stations doing well in terms of share when they at least pretend to be local - Clyde 1, Forth One, Northsound 1, etc, play exactly the same music and have the same format as 'The Hits', but are largely presented from Scotland. It might be down to the lack of competition on FM, or it might tell you something about what the public think about all this consolidation.
I have not heard of ANY of the ten songs in the Radio 1 column. Ouch.

(And only 7 in the Radio 2 column).
I do not regard Internet "radio" as radio but a streaming service. Radio is sending signals/messages through the air so the only way Internet radio might fall into that category was if you used wifi for the final link.
I am surprised that the listener figures are so high, I expect a lot of time that could be car radio users.
Isn't there a BBC Essex station anymore?

dg writes: It fits none of these categories.
Only one in the radio 2 column, and two in the Radio 6 column.

But then I'm usually listening to Radio 4 Extra
My mistake, I didn't read the titles of the chart properly and missed that you were showing the highest and lowest share of audience.
Wow, Yorkshire Coast Radio tops that list! Lots of residual fondness for it in this household.
I'm in the target audience for radio 2 these days but judging by that list, it wouldn't be my cup of tea! Used to like Radio 1 but not heard of any of those songs. Radio 6 music on the hand sounds quite appealing (Voodoo Ray is also in my top 10 most listened to.)
The story of local radio seems to have been one of continuous consolidations. Nevertheless there are around 600 radio stations in the UK, once hospital broadcasting, student radio and the many community stations are included.
I listen to a lot of radio 1 and the top 10 list is a little perplexing. Half the list of moderately successful commercial dance songs from 2017. That seems odd in itself. I guess pop erring dance potentially has a bit more longevity and appeal across both specialist dance music shows and daytime. But still, doesn’t feel right.

Love that CSS are in the top 10 on radio 6! Maybe I should listen to that more often.
I'm not surprised Radio London has a particularly low audience share. They seem determined to duplicate what LBC does rather than provide an alternative, relying almost completely on encouraging listeners to phone or message in to rant about how awful the world is. It makes depressing listening. I'm almost entirely 6 Music now, which is a pity in some ways as I don't get to hear as much as I used to about all the interesting things happening in London. Lucky there's still DG to fall back on!
It's the pirates I miss. Kool FM, Weekend Rush, Pulse FM, Freek FM, Deja Vu FM, London Underground FM etc.
Although BBC Radio London has the lowest share it does have the highest audience for any BBC local radio station, by quite some distance, due to the fact it serves a population of millions. It has 978,000 listeners per week, compare that to the 17,000 that listen to BBC Radio Guernsey per week which appears in your highest share column, but serves a population of just over 50,000
Is there data on listening numbers at different hours of the day?
I would imagine that mornings and late afternoon/ early evening are busy with numbers plummeting later with lots of TV viewing from 8 - 10pm. But perhaps that is not correct.

dg writes: That data is for subscribers only.
The 6 Music top 10 is perhaps a little misleading - they play such a wide variety of new music alongside what music programmers would call 'recurrents' - each of the tracks on that list might only get a play every week or two, but do that for a decade and it adds up. Turn on today and you're more likely to hear something new by Little Simz, Damon Albarn, Courtney Barnett.

dg writes: Over the last 10 years Radio 1's most-played song got an average of two plays a week, Radio 2's one play a week and 6 Music's one play a fortnight.
Unsurprisingly Dales radio doesn't make any of these lists. It does at least appear to be a genuinely local station ... though we have to listen to it over the internet - the combination of hills and 3' thick stone walls means national FM stations are barely accessible and DAB totally non existent.
Some info on who listens when & how things have changed thanks to the pandemic is here.
I like Times Radio.
Being a Times reader, I started listening to it when it started, and it's enerally very professional and enaging.
If you want some talk radio, I prefer it to 5 Live with too many inane phone ins.
It's mainly news based, so obviously more "variety" on Radio 4.
Is Rajar data based on units of, say, 5 minutes (ie calculating reach on the numbers listening for at least a minimum time)? I suspect the figures would look different if they allowed for actual time spent listening — for instance, “drive time” programmes might keep people tuned in for longer (commuting or school run) than the same station at, say, 11.30am, so actual overall listenership as a population percentage could be a bit different. Radio 4 probably has listeners who tune in for specific programmes, but don’t necessarily leave the radio on in the background as one might for, say, a music channel.

dg writes: Rajar collect all sorts of data, including who listens for at least 5 minutes a week ("reach"), total hours spent listening and average hours per listener.
The biggest impact the 1st lockdown had on my life was going from listening to the radio from the moment I got up to the moment I went to bed, to not listening to it at all anymore. And it wasn't even a gentle decrease - I literally stopped listening overnight!

I'm not even sure why now - maybe when we were all cocooning at home I didn't want the outside world, with all its bad news, intruding. I had already stopped watching the news at the start of the year, so it just sort of followed on from that!
The biggest impact of the pandemic and working from home, etc. on our household has been a quite drastic shift from Radio 4 to Radio 3. Anger levels generated particularly by "Today" on Radio 4 are thoroughly calmed by Petroc Trelawny.
I spent my working days for the last 25 years listening to the great Robert Elms. Shame on you Radio London for axing the best show on radio. They have 1 less listener now

dg writes: axed-ish.
Around 4.5 years ago I migrated from BBC 6 Music to NTS which has soundtracked my life ever since. I can't be doing with the blather of the BBC or normal commercial radio.
Came here fully expecting to be the only person who listened to Planet Rock and reads DG. Pleased to be wrong just two comments in!
As a R1/Kisstory listener, I'm surprised at the R1 list for being so free of number ones. R2 list sounds like R1 of 10-15 years ago.
Interesting stuff. As a 6 Music listener I was truly surprised at the "most played records over the last 10 years" list. But it speaks to their range and diversity that even something played every couple of weeks over a long enough period of time will make the list.










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