Radio Listening - Stations Compared

5:32p.m., Fri 16 Oct 2009

I used to listen to a lot of radio - both in terms of the amount of time I spent listening and the range of different radio stations I'd listen to. This has dropped off over the last few years, for a number of reasons.

1 - Environment

I switched jobs. My new working environment no longer featured a radio burbling in the background. Incidentally, my new place of employment was a radio group!

2 - Online Streaming Services

I spend way more time now listening to last.fm, podcasts, Mixcloud and Spotify. Time spent with these new mediums has eaten into my radio listening time.

3 - I'm A Grumpy Old Man Now

I think I've probably moved on to a point in my life when there's fewer radio stations that appeal to me. My thirst for new music has evaporated and there's no radio stations that play the kind of music I want. 6Music is the closest but covers such a broad range of music that it's not entirely infalliable to annoying me.

I work in radio, and I've found recently that I have a load of assumptions about different radio brands that have become out-dated. So I spent a few days listening to an hour of mid-morning programming from a handful of radio stations. Since I was listening to them I made notes about the amount of speech Vs music Vs audio branding Vs advertisements.

I chose to listen to mid-morning/lunchtime slots - between 10am and 1pm. The make-up of the breakfast (and drivetime to a lesser extent) slots will be very different, but I wanted to get an idea of each station in its broadest sense.

The stations I listened to (with their owners in brackets):

• Absolute Radio formerly Virgin Radio (TIML Golden Square ltd.)
• BBC Radio 1 (BBC)
• BBC Radio 2 (BBC)
• BBC 6Music (BBC)
• 95.8 Capital FM (Global Radio)
• Gold London formerly Capital Gold (Global Radio)
• Classic FM (Global Radio)
• Heart London (Global Radio)
• Kiss (Bauer Media Group)
• Magic (Bauer Media Group)
• Planet Rock DAB only (independent)
• XFM London (Global Radio)

The results are below. I present them without comment. You can make your own judgements based on these figures if that's the way you're inclined. I might comment in a later post.

Some notes on the terms I've used are below the results.

That's a confusing lot of data to make head or tail of, some here's a pretty graph and a more simple data view.

This is a simpler, and easier to comprehend, comparison, comparing the number of ads & tracks featured on each station. Since Spotify are increasingly featuring advertisements to non-paying users, there's a comparson in there too.

Notes - Terminology

Speech

Generally, but not always, a DJ talking. Kiss use listeners voices to pre-announce tracks, Capital use pre-recorded snatches of the artists themselves introducing their own music. DJs often talk over the intro and outro of music, this I've counted as speech. The BBC DJs have a greater tendency to do this and may speak over the beginning of a record, allow 10 or so seconds to pass and then speak again before the vocal kicks in - in these cases the speech is measured all the way up until the track is allowed to play uninterrrupted. It's a blurred line but this seemed the fairest way to do things. News bulletins, weather forecasts and traffic reports all count as speech.

Jingle

A chunk of sonic branding reminding the listener of the radio station, sometimes includes a strapline e.g. "This is Absolute Radio. Now one year old". Some stations have jingles for features or competitions too.

Music

That's pure musical track, as recorded by an artist i.e. not produced by the station as part of its on-air identity or as part of an advert, or as part of a trail.

Trail

I'm defining a trail as some pre-recorded, pre-edited advertisement for some other programming (i.e. another show) this may include some element of a jingle, some music and some speech - it's generally a hybrid of jingles and speech, but they key is that it is pre-recorded and/or pre-prepared. Some include sponsorship i.e. "Capital FM's Jingle Bell Ball brought to you with Windows 7" but I've not included references to these as "adverts" - what's important is the listener's perception, rather than whether revenue is involved.

Advert

Your traditional radio ad. Note that the amount of commercial activity isn't just limited to traditional advertising. Magic's Mystery Voices competition for example, is sponsored by Paypal. If the DJ mentions this, that counts as

Full Notes

My full rough notes are available. These include transmisions dates/times/ the songs played, advertisers and other random detail.