Every three months we receive the latest listening figures from RAJAR, and today the data has been published for the period between the 15th September and the 15th December 2013. This time we have reached a new record audience for Radio 4 at just over 11 million.
We had some memorable programmes - Grayson Perry's Reith Lectures, Mishal Husain as a welcome new presenter on Today, Andrew Dilnot charting A History of Britain in Numbers and Olivia Colman and Natasha McElhone in the heart-breaking drama ‘Goodbye’.
I am delighted that our audiences continue to enjoy Radio 4 and the breadth and depth of programmes that we offer. It is this distinctive and rich mix which appeals to our discerning listeners and attracts extraordinary talent to our airwaves, so although across the BBC we are having to make decisions about what we do with our finite resources, we always strive to preserve this range and quality for Radio 4 listeners.
Here are the key points about Radio 4’s listening figures from our Audiences Research Manager Elizabeth Lane:
- With 11.2m tuning into Radio 4 every week, the network reached a record number of listeners this quarter, beating our previous record by over 200K listeners (the previous record was in Q2 2013 with 10.98m listeners).
- As usual, this was equivalent to one in five UK adults tuning into Radio 4 – or 21% of the population. Radio 4’s share returned to a healthy 12.5% of listening – or one in eight minutes of radio consumed. This is up on the quarter (versus 11.8% in Q3 2013) and steady with last year (12.5% in Q4 2012).
- Across all genres we had healthy figures. News programmes had their strongest quarter to date with 9.59m weekly listeners. Within this, Today saw a strong reach of 7.14m, and both WATO and PM had record quarters of 3.7m and 4.11m respectively. You & Yours also saw record figures for this quarter, with 3.56m weekly listeners.
- Drama continued to come in second with 6.98m average weekly listeners: The Archers continued to pull in a strong weekly reach of 5.0m listeners. Comedy programmes also saw a quarterly increase, with 5.5m tuning in each week – an increase of 81K on the quarter.
Gwyneth Williams is the Controller of BBC Radio 4 and BBC Radio 4 Extra.
RAJAR (Radio Joint Audience Research) is jointly owned by the BBC and commercial radio trade body the Radio Centre. Participating listeners are asked to record their radio listening in quarter-hour time blocks for one week.
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