Later

There is some good news in the latest quarterly figures measuring radio listening. People like Ken Bruce, Emma Barnett, Naga Munchetty, James O'Brien, Pandora Christie and other less familiar names find themselves in the new peak listening period, from 10am to 11am. 

As predicted, we're all getting up later, spending less time listening to car radios, and less time listening to the radio at work, so the old, pre-pandemic peak of 0730 to 0830 has shifted, as demonstrated by graphs from Matt Deegan. 

RAJAR, who compile the figures, have warned against people comparing stations' ratings with the last figures (issued in March 2020) and indeed, have disabled the Quarter on Quarter and Year on Year functions in their online public spreadsheets. This is because of 'new methodology', with results from listening devices now added to the usual survey and diary information. Of course, you can still make your own comparisons, and the BBC News website is not short of them. 

My highlights: a stonking performance from Radio 5, reaching 5.9m; a reasonable debut from Times Radio, at 637,000 weekly listeners, above the station's 500,000 target at this stage, and ahead of TalkRadio, on-air for five years.