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What
measures are used to gauge radio listening?
 Although
children and teenagers do fill in the RAJAR diaries that record their
radio listening, most stations use the 15+ population as their audience
base. Listening by under 15s is then used separately, as required.
One of the
main audience measurements for radio is Weekly Reach. This is the
number of people (or percentage of a population) that heard a station
for at least five minutes in a given week. So if every single member of
Â鶹Éç Radio Kent's area population that is over 15 years old heard Â鶹Éç Radio
Kent in a week, its reach would be 100%.
Share
of listening is a measure of how much of all listening to the radio
is directed to a certain station. So if half of all radio listening in
the UK was people listening to Radio 2, then its share of all listening
would be 50%. Share to a station is boosted by having a core listenership
that listens heavily through the week, while listeners that tune in and
out for a specific purpose (like sport or traffic news) are more likely
to boost reach.
Another measure
sometimes used is hours per listener. This shows how long an average
listener listens to a station for in a week. The higher the average, the
higher share of listening is likely to be. However, this is not always
the case - a station might have a high weekly reach, which means that
many of its listeners don't listen for sustained periods and therefore
bring the hours per listener average down. Alternatively, a station might
have a very loyal core audience which pushes the average up, but which
is too small to make a big impression on the share of all listening
to radio.
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