Listening post

A year-on-year look at the latest quarterly listening figures shows a small swing away from BBC national and local stations in favour of the national commercial stations.

Radios 1, 2, and 4 are down 3% in weekly reach, compared with a year ago. BBC Local Radio in England, currently being re-imagined by Chris Burns, is down 6%. All BBC radio is down 2.43%.  Combined national commercial stations are up 6%.

Director of Radio James Purnell points us to Radio 5Live Sports Extra, up 31% on the previous year; big brother 5Live was largely stable, despite breakfast output dipping below 2m.

The BBC press release also highlights podcasting penetration: "now at 8.4 million (from 7.1m last quarter and 6m last year), with almost a quarter of young people (15-34) now listening to podcasts." It doesn't say what the BBC share of that audience is; RAJAR's summer survey asks respondents to list podcast listening under three labels,  "BBC", "Other Radio" or "Other", so somebody knows.

BBC Radio Wales is up 16%, but Radio Cymru is down 14%. BBC Radio Scotland is down 9%. Radio Ulster is down 5%.   The LBC group is up 23%.