BBC Radio 3 – the corporation’s classical music, jazz and world music radio station – has stolen a march on the release of quarterly listener figure reports by issuing a press release proclaiming ‘record-breaking’ gains for the station in quarter three (July-September) of 2024.
It’s headline message reads an increase in audience reach of over 2 million, and the highest ever average hours listened in the stations history.
Reach relates to the total size of the audience Radio 3 connects with in any given quarter. Consistently year on year, Q3 figures show a significant skew in reach due to the summer-long BBC Proms season. The station’s most significant growth in reach was in Q3 2023 when numbers increased by 17.2% to just over 2 million. This year its ‘over 2 million’ with no specifics, suggesting that the increase isn’t anywhere near as significant compared to last year (otherwise, wouldn’t the figure be made explicit?)
The average hours listened is a good indicator of the length of time listeners remain with the station. The higher the number the more audiences are sticking around to listen. The press release states that average hours listened are the highest in the stations history. The highest figure in recent years was 7.9 hours in 2022 (7.6 hours in 2021). Without explicit figures its hard to tell just how high that figure for average hours listened really is. But the absence of the figure suggests that whilst it will be a little higher, it probably isn’t that high otherwise, again, why not quote it?
The narrative matters more than the figures for the current Controller of BBC Radio 3 Sam Jackson, whose sweeping changes to the schedule caused consternation amongst the vocal old-guard audience historically resistant to any kind of change to their familiar schedule.
Jackson will want to demonstrate to sceptical commentators that his changes are working, that he was right, and that classical music is appealing to a whole new audience, regardless of how negligible the gains really are in practice. More people sticking with the station for longer will be vindication for Jackson, not least the rule robustly enforced by producers and programmers that forbids the playout of anything by a soprano at breakfast. Seems like that strategy has just about paid off.
Update (11.16am)
Further communication from BBC Radio 3 highlights the core figures for this quarter’s RAJARs. Q3 2024 reach up by 1.8% year-on-year, which is 2.04m, up from 2.02m Q3 2023 — 200K increase just short of the highest reach for Scala Radio at its peak a couple of years back. Average hours per listener was 8.1 hours, up from 7.9 hours in Q3 2023 — that’s an increase of 12 minutes.
