Saying Hi to the Hybrid

Last month, a new approach to Radio appeared - Greatest Hits Radio NI, a DAB offering from Bauer which blends local content such as news, weather, traffic and of course advertising, into what is otherwise a national service, with known ‘names’ such as Simon Mayo and Ken Bruce. 
This hybrid model has been in play for some time across the water, but at the expense of paring back truly local services. Here, at least, it is an addition. While RAJAR* research will take time to reflect the performance of the NI version, the baseline before its introduction will be 106,000 listeners according to the latest release.

Among the fully fledged local stations, Cool FM has consolidated its position as leader in reach with 527,000 weekly listeners tuning in for a total of 4,590,000 hours, giving a share of 15.6. At the same time last year, there were 434,000 listeners, 2,946,000 hours and an 11.2 share.
 
BBC Radio Ulster/Foyle achieved a reach increase of 30,000 year on year, this now being 499,000. Their hours and share ranked best locally – 4,733,000 (were 4,688,000) and 16.1 (was 17.8).
 
Q Radio enjoyed a substantial upswing in reach, to 362,000 from 241,000, with a more modest improvement in hours (2,173,000 from 1,738,000) and share (7.4 from 6.6).
 
Downtown posted a reach of 288,000 (was 302,000) with hours and share declining (2,253,000 from 2,577,000 and 7.6 from 9.8).
 
U105 features next in the league table, with a 249,000 reach in its original Greater Belfast coverage area (was 186,000) along with 2,381,000 hours (were 1,923,000) and share of 13.2 (was 12.7). Outside Belfast, a further 31,000 listeners (were 27,000) devoting 180,000 hours to the station (were 153,000) with a 1.6 share (was 1.3).
 
Downtown Country completes the picture with 91,000 listeners, 699,000 hours, and a 2.4 share; these were previously 106,000 listeners, 780,000 hours and a 3.0 share.
 
As followers of this blog will know, I like to place local listening in the context of all radio consumption, and the combined figure for the stations listed above is now 58%, an annual rise of two percentage points.
 
 
*RAJAR is compiled by Ipsos-MORI
Note: each station is quoted within its own Total Survey Area.