MUMBAI: According to the official Rajar listening figures published last week mobile phones are increasingly used in the UK to plug into FM radio stations especially by those between the ages of 15 and 24.
Some 13.5 per cent of people said they had used their mobiles for radio listening in the third quarter, up from just 1.8 per cent in 2002, while in the 15-24 category almost a third, 32.7 per cent, fell into this category, up from six per cent seven years ago.
Digital Radio is accounting for an increasing amount of radio listening, although it still trails analogue by a long way.Digital made up 21.1 per cent of the audience in the third quarter of this year, up from 18.7 per cent a year ago. This is less than a third of the 66.1 per cent represented by AM and FM, while the remaining 12.8 per cent is deemed unspecified, because listeners are unsure how the station they are listening to is being broadcast.
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Of that digital listening, more than half – 13.3 per cent out of the 21.1 per cent – is done via DAB sets. Digital TV has a 3.6 per cent share, the internet 2.2 per cent, with a further 2 per cent unspecified by the listeners taking part in the Rajar survey.
DAB is more likely to be used to listen to BBC stations, such as 6Music, than to commercial rivals, such as Planet Rock, the figures show. DAB made up almost three-quarters of the BBC’s 21.6 per cent digital audience share, compared with half of commercial stations’ 20.2 per cent share. They tend to do better from listening via digital television. The Rajar figures also show that an increasing percentage of people over 15 claim they own a DAB set at home. Almost a third of the listeners – 32.3 per cent – fell into this category in the third quarter of the year, more than seven times the number who did five years ago, when just 4.5 per cent said they owned a DAB set.
