The Dutch radio listening figures for June/July 2006 were published this morning by research bureau Infomart GfK. Market-leader Radio 538 has strengthened its position, as has Q-music. Both stations increased their market share by 0.3%, as did Sky Radio which is now just 0.2% behind the second-placed station, Radio 2. Some of these listeners may have come from the public network 3FM, which fell slightly. But some certainly switched over from RTL FM, which lost its terrestrial FM coverage in mid-July, and its market share has already dropped from 3.3 to 2.5 percent. That would normally be an alarming fall, but the feeling is that RTL will probably close the station before long, or turn it into a continuous music station. Several high-profile presenters have left the station and not been replaced.
A clearer picture of where RTL’s listeners have gone should be apparent from the July/August figures. The station that replaced it on FM, 100%NL, is aiming at a totally different audience, and officially launches its full schedule tomorrow. Public network Radio 747 will be re-launched as Radio 5 with a totally new format on 4 September, and hopes to gain market share. With two new stations on the air running niche formats, the next few months should be quite interesting.
Radio 10 Gold re-jigged its format a few months ago to try to attract more listeners under 50. It plays less from the 1960’s, and has added a few of the most popular current songs to its playlist. This may have affected its demographic profile, but not the audience share, which has stayed around 5% for a long time now. This month, Radio 10 Gold is neck and neck with Radio Veronica, which has a similar format. Both stations must be wishing the other didn’t exist, as their combined market share would put them close to the top of the list.
The regional public stations continue to do well, with a cumulative share well above that of any national station.
The market shares in percent (May/June figures in brackets) are as follows:
Radio 538 - 11.9 (11.6)
Radio 2 * - 10.1 (unchanged)
Sky Radio - 9.9 (9.6)
Radio 3 FM * - 7.9 (8.1)
Radio 1 * - 7.8 (7.3)
Q-music - 6.1 (5.8)
Radio 10 Gold - 4.9 (4.8)
Radio Veronica - 4.9 (5.1)
RTL FM - 2.5 (3.3)
Radio 4 * - 1.7 (1.9)
Caz! - 1.6 (1.7)
Classic FM - 1.6 (1.9)
Arrow Classic Rock - 1.5 (1.6)
Slam FM - 1.5 (1.7)
Radio 747 * - 0.9 (unchanged)
Arrow Jazz FM - 0.6 (0.5)
BNR Nieuwsradio - 0.4 (unchanged)
Kink FM - 0.4 (0.3)
Regional public stations (cumulative) - 14.8 (14.4)
Regional commercial stations (cumulative) - 2.6 (unchanged)
Other stations - 6.4 (unchanged)
* Public network. Others commercial.
on Aug 31st, 2006 at 12:32
Will be interesting to see how the Regional Publics do if/when they appear FTA on Astra this autumn. Their combined total share is always ahead of the top individual station.
on Aug 31st, 2006 at 18:32
I think the sensible thing for RTL to do would be to hold out until they can get a place on national DAB. The rest of their Dutch media operations are doing very well and therefore I don’t think it would harm their profits much if they continued to run RTL FM as a non stop music station on cable in the meantime. Also now that they are no longer bound by the format requirements of the terrestrial licence i.e. to play Dutch language music, they can change the format of RTL FM and play more music that would appeal to a much wider group of people.