A change of tone in the press release for BBC Sounds this quarter, which seem to positively celebrate the achievements of long-running BBC Radio 4 shows for the first time, rather than the previous overweening acclamation for groovy podcasts aimed at the under-35s.
Charlotte Moore, Director of Content, provides us with this quote "With Radio 4 we’re adapting to meet the changing listening needs of our audiences and have risen to the challenge with on-demand listening for the station up by 15.1% year on year with its programming dominating the most listened to charts."
A pat on the back for Mo, and the old stagers, The Archers, In Our Time and Desert Island Discs. However, perhaps because of podcast promiscuity, linear Radio 4 is down 11.4% year-on-year in reach - from 10.6m to 9.4m. The Today programme is down from 6.5m to 5.7m.
Radio 4: on-demand listening up a bit; linear listening down a bit. Just a massive long shot here, but could those two figures be, y'know, linked in some way?
ReplyDeleteToday prog down a bit, but you don't say whether that's simply as a part of the previously-mentioned decline in linear listening. Has Today benefited from the uptick in on-demand?