You may have heard that we currently lead the radio industry in digital listening. In our last set of Rajar results one quarter (24.9%) of all our listening was via a digital platform (DAB, online or digital TV). This compares to an industry average of only 18% with commercial radio averaging 18.4% and the BBC lagging slightly behind at 17%.

When you analyse the figures you begin to see exactly how strong we are digitally and how much bigger we would be in an all-digital world. It is no secret that we are currently dwarfed by a couple of national BBC music services but when isolating digital listening I’m not supposed to mention any other specific stations. I therefore can’t tell you which national BBC service has nine times more analogue listening than us but only three times as much DAB listening. I also can’t tell you which national BBC service has fourteen times more analogue listening than us but only four times as much online listening.

If the playing field was to be levelled and everyone switched to digital, would it be reasonable to expect us to attract one quarter or even one third of the amount of listening a flagship BBC station currently does? There was a recent suggestion to switch all analogue services to digital by 2020 and perhaps AM will be shut down sooner than this. Should we even expect a level playing field? After all, quite a while ago Magellan proved that the earth isn’t flat.

Closing AM too soon will of course have a significant impact on our business. How much of our listening do you think currently comes from AM? How many listeners search us out and persevere despite the obvious limitations the platform has for a music service?

In our last Rajar, almost one third of our listening was via AM and a point that surprised me was that over 80% of our AM listeners never tune in to us via any other means. Very few are listening to us on AM in their car and then switching to online or DAB when they get to work. In fact, most of our AM listening happens in the home. There is no skew towards either in car or at work listening.

To see where there is any skew or bias I’ve looked at a number of elements to see what proportion of their listening is via AM. Remember, the station average is 33%.

• At Home 33%
• At Work 34%
• In Car  34%

There is a gender bias with far less of our female listening being via AM.

• Males   37%
• Females 29%

There is also an age bias with much more AM listening coming from our older listeners.

• 15-24   27%
• 25-34   30%
• 35-44   31%
• 45-54   39%
• 55-64   43%
• 65+     62%

There is also a bias towards the lower socio-economic groups.

• A       23%
• B       18%
• C1      22%
• C2      46%
• D       49%
• E       51%