BBC 6 Music's audience rises again

BBC 6 Music, saved from closure last month, has increased its audience for the second quarter running.

The digital radio station, which was proposed for closure before being saved by the BBC Trust, has doubled its average weekly audience since last year to a record 1.194 million for the three months to the end of June, according to Rajar figures published today.

Digital radio overall, including digital audio broadcasting (DAB), digital TV and online, accounted for 24.6% of all radio listening in the second quarter. This compared with 24% in the first three months of 2009, a 2.5% rise. Year on year, digital's share of total listening was up 17%.

The unprecedented campaign by 6 Music fans to save the station helped boost its audience by 100.7% year on year and 16.7% over the previous quarter.

BBC Asian Network, which is still facing closure, also managed to post a rise in listenership, with an average weekly reach of 437,000 listeners – an increase of 22.4% over the previous quarter and 3.8% year on year.

But the BBC's other digital stations did not fare so well. Radio 5 Live Sports Extra was down 19.1% year on year and 20.1% quarter on quarter to 547,000 listeners a week, despite the football World Cup in June, which helped take its sister station 5 Live to its best ever figures.

1Xtra's audience fell 5.4% from a year ago and 9.5% on the previous quarter to a weekly average of 600,000 listeners.

The speech station BBC Radio 7 bucked the corporation's digital trend with a 13.8% year-on-year rise, although this was still a fall of 9.5% quarter on quarter, to 949,000 listeners.

Commercial radio's digital stations fared a little better, with most posting increases on the previous quarter.

Planet Rock reached its highest ever audience of 718,000, a rise of 3.5% on the previous period and up 1.3% on the previous year.

Smash Hits was up 16.1% on the previous quarter, although down 14.3% year on year, to 990,000 listeners.

NME Radio rose 17.7% on a year ago and was up 11.9% on the previous quarter to 253,000 listeners.

Ford Ennals, the chief executive of Digital Radio UK, the body charged with driving digital radio switchover, said: "Digital radio is good for radio; with 20 million people now listening to digital radio each week – 2 million more than last year – this has helped to achieve an all time record for radio listening.

"Since the last quarter there have been strong increases in DAB and commercial digital radio. With the launch of Smooth on Digital One, the launch of Radioplayer and significant increases in the number of new cars with digital radio as standard, we look forward to sustained digital growth in the second half of 2010."

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