Speak up

Producers of speech radio probably wouldn't mind another referendum on Europe, after this year's campaign boosted network figures quite nicely. LBC nationally was up nearly 17% year on year; Radio 5Live, perhaps also helped by the Premier League run-in, was up 10%, and Radio 4 up 9%, to its best figures since methodology changed in 1999.

The new TalkRADIO debuted to 224k listeners, TalkSPORT2 picked up 285k and the main TalkSPORT was up 8%. All will do better with the extra publicity that new owner News International can easily generate.

At the local level, BBC Local Radio in England was down 5.5% overall. Radio Wales was down 18% to its lowest weekly reach for seventeen years; Radio Cymru, about to launch a pop-up station for summer, was down 11%.

Musically, Radio 3 was up 16% (Classic FM can't moan much - they were up 4.5%). 6Music was up 10%, to another record, at close to 2.3m. Radio 1 hit its lowest figures since 2003, when Sara Cox was your breakfast host. Jazz FM, now available nationally, was up 6.6%. The all new Virgin Radio started with 409k.

For more analysis, try Matt Deegan and Adam Bowie.  Paul Easton has great London charts.