Photo: mareadj, used under licence.

The number of people listening to radio now is the highest it has even been, with the Q1:09 RAJAR figures showing that 45.8 million people listen to radio each week. Higher than it was when broadcast radio launched seven decades ago – and higher than it was when commercial radio launched four decades ago.

Capital in London has had its highest audience in almost four years, Magic’s reach is up, Kiss has also improved – as has Radio 1, and new stations like Jazz FM have launched with a strong first RAJAR. As for Absolute Radio, we are regaining reported listeners – with 1.7 million – a correction of over 13% compared to the first three months of Absolute Radio.

The reason that so many people are listening to radio is, in part, due to the nature of our medium. Radio is a complimentary medium to so many of life’s busy activities – you can listen to the radio while driving, cooking or looking after the kids. Try and read a newspaper or watch TV doing those things and you would end up with a smashed car, an awful meal and an unhappy family. Radio is also much easier to listen to than it was for our parents: on mobile phones, portable devices, through TV on Sky or Freeview, streamed over the Internet during work and more.

Radio is also a medium that works well in a diverging digital world. Blogs can compete with newspapers for time ’spent reading’, video services like YouTube compete against television for ‘time spent viewing’, but streaming, podcasting, DAB and other audio digital services compliment the content on radio for ‘time spent listening’. The role that radio plays is – to use a dictionary ‘word o’ – synchronistic. It can be consumed at the same time as other activities, but also draws together an audience as a community with shared experience. People enjoy radio while getting on with their lives.

Which is why, with the date of the analogue switch off for radio potentially to be announced in weeks – not years – digital is more important for radio than ever. The 49.8% of our audience listening outside London is an increase of 4.8 points since last quarter (way ahead of the 20.1% industry average). This RAJAR also saw our average hours, or engagement if you like, increase to 7.1 hours a week – the highest our time spent listening has been in the last ten years. This shows me that people like the quality of product coming out of One Golden Square, personalities like Christian O Connell, Iain Lee, Geoff Lloyd and Frank Skinner providing a major advantage over digital music only services.

Radio sometimes appears to have a reputation as a static or even dying medium – which simply isn’t true, Last weeks results make it clear, more people now listen to radio in the UK than ever have done before. When the switch off of the analogue signal happens – and it will happen – there will still be the same huge demand for radio, only as a digital medium. At Absolute Radio, we’re making sure we will be able to satisfy that demand.

Clive