RAJAR’s quarterly radio listening figures were released today for Q4, 2016. The figures paint a very healthy picture of radio in the UK, with no signs at all of it being a dying medium. In fact, the number of adults over 15 tuning in every week was the second-highest ever at 48.7 million.
The BBC remains by far the most popular broadcaster, with a 53.5% share of listening, and the top three most popular stations were all BBC stations:
- BBC Radio 2: 15m listeners a week
- BBC Radio 4: 11.3m listeners a week
- BBC Radio 1: 9.6m listeners a week
Classic FM is the most popular commercial station, with roughly 5.4m listeners a week.
Now that all the figures for 2016 are in, the total number of hours people in the UK spent listening to the radio in 2016 can be calculated at roughly 4.1 billion. This shows that radio remains an incredibly popular and important medium, despite the growing range of alternatives.
See the full figures on RAJAR’s website here.
The infographic below shows some of the highlights of RAJAR’s Q4 2016 data.
