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Its Official Real/Heart Northern stations ratings fall over cliff.
seiko456
Posts: 1,442 Forum Member
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I never thought it would be this bad, Scotland has fallin off a cliff, and with the amount of complaints the station has had since it changed over to Heart I dare say Q2 will worse. before we see any recovery
Real Radio : Q3: 2013:
Scotland 10.8%
Real Radio North East 4.1%
Real Radio North West 3.4%
Real Radio Yorkshire 5.5%
Real Radio : Q4: 2013:
Scotland 10%
Real Radio North East 3.9%
Real Radio North West 3.4%
Real Radio Yorkshire 5.0%
Q1 2014:
Real Radio North East 3.30%
Real Radio North West 3.30%
Real Radio Scotland 7.70%
Real Radio Yorkshire 5.5%
Real Radio : Q3: 2013:
Scotland 10.8%
Real Radio North East 4.1%
Real Radio North West 3.4%
Real Radio Yorkshire 5.5%
Real Radio : Q4: 2013:
Scotland 10%
Real Radio North East 3.9%
Real Radio North West 3.4%
Real Radio Yorkshire 5.0%
Q1 2014:
Real Radio North East 3.30%
Real Radio North West 3.30%
Real Radio Scotland 7.70%
Real Radio Yorkshire 5.5%
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Comments
And interestingly you've missed out Wales which, of course, is on a record high.
Lies, damned lies and all that ...
Really? This march is STILL LOWER than last march: 8.5%, apart from going back up which I dare say because the Renagared comeback, its still going downwards.
This is all a bit dramatic! Anyway Heart has replaced those brands now as a recovery is on the mend!
Any listerns is did have switching over, this mean it will have to found new people to switch to Heart? that is going to take a while. I think we wont get a proper picture until Q3. :kitty:
It's gonna be VERY interesting in Q3! I do beeline though that people who switched over real will switch over to heart now.
I predict the figures will be even lower in 6 months time. What is on now is just plain dreadful.
Right......
As much as I hate Heart, I predict you'll be wrong, because Global knows what they are doing, whereas you don't have a Scooby Doo.
I look forward to seeing you proved wrong.
You only need to look at how well Heart Cornwall is doing to 'get' that Global knows what they are doing, some of my fellow 'Heart-haters' need to wake-up & smell the coffee.
A quick glance at the RAJAR figures, as displayed on Radio Today's dedicated section, and I'm seeing a sea of red figures, both for the quarterly results and year-on-year, with a general trend of decline, both in reach and share, throughout the network.
While it might not have been holed below the waterline, it needed serious reinvigorating to arrest this decline, which would have been completely pointless when Global already had Heart available to replace it with.
Heart was the no-brainer move.
True, there is a risk to introducing it to markets where it has never been available on FM before, and it's replacing names which in some areas have been around for well over 10 years.
But the clear indication was that the remaining audience of Real, up and down the UK, were liking what Real was doing less and less, and thus were deserting it in increasing numbers.
Heart has overall worked reasonably well in the areas where it has been introduced already.
You don't like it. I get that. Neither do I, particularly.
If I listen to commercial radio at all, it's generally Kiss, with a dash of Capital. In both cases, that's usually on Friday and Saturday nights for the dance shows, although I'll admit I've been listening more to it in daytimes over the last 9 months or so than I have been in years.
The rest of the time it's Radio 4, or specialist Internet-only Trance stations, and FIP, which broadcasts on FM in major urban markets across France, carries no commercials (because it's part of the French national broadcaster Radio France) and has a good quality Internet stream which isn't geo-locked to France. If you want real music variety, listen to that.
http://www.fipradio.fr/
As a household, we also particularly like Radio Classique, which is France's equivalent (and in our view vastly superior to) Global's Classic FM.:
http://www.radioclassique.fr
Lengthy sections of uninterrupted music, particularly in the evening. But it's a commercial station, and has been on-air for many years. It makes Classic FM seem very boring by comparison. Classic FM, take note!
So, Heart doesn't rock my boat, so I don't listen.
I don't go moaning about it on here just because I don't like it.
It's a bit sad you relish someone being proven wrong, but I think you are right though, the RAJARs will clearly be higher in the coming months, if only because of the amount of advertising and promotion that's taking place for it.
As has been said many, many times before however, quantity does not equate to quality. The numbers may well go up but this has nothing to do with it being a better radio product. Heart demonstrably is little more than a music jukebox with some minimal banal fluff input from the presenters. While this is, apparently, a model of what modern radio has (and is set to increasingly, I fear) become, it does not present radio - as a medium - at its most creative, original or engaging best and there is nothing you can say, do or show that can prove otherwise, because the moment you can do, Heart will cease to be that slick, polished bland-fest you love so much and that zealist others have whipped themselves into a geeky frenzy over and will become a station that the lovers of the bland and repetitive will likely find too challenging for them. Were that day ever to come, I look forward to seeing all the scary heart fanboys bleating on here about the loss of their beloved wallpaper radio.
* Will the number of new listens switching over out number the the switching off?
* Will the new listens stay with Heart?
* IF there do could this damage Capital or Smooth?
1. it knows to be successful needs to get income from ads, the ad agencies want to concentrate on females which run households to focus products, therefore some stations have to target busy housewifes and business women to keep some ad agencies happy, Global have decided this is the way forward for Heart.
The Heart format does this well and looks like some non target people have now in the run up decided to stop listening as Real started to change music policy.
Now Global (or Comunicorp in N Wales) have full control they can go all out after the target group.
http://www.thisisglobal.com/radio/heart-fm/audience/#stats
2. Looks like the new target group mostly stays with Heart and grows with the TV and poster promotions!
3. Heart is also very much targeted at 25-44 year olds, it could be some previous young Real listeners move to Capital targeted at under 34s, or older 40 + listeners move to Smooth?
If neither then there are other stations, hopefully increasing use of digital platforms will provide more plurality of station owners and choice of stations?
I think I understand what you are trying to say
Anyhoo, if only Global had embarked on a massive media and PR campaign to alert the public to the availability of Heart eh?
So wether Heart is on the mend or not, she wont know as she has tuned out and wont be tuning back in as i did yonks ago when it lost all locality.
The last part is an understatement
I think the new Hearts particularly in Scotland and South Wales will lose some of their heritage audience - it'll be interesting to see if they can replace that with a newer audience.
In the case of Scotland it was around for 12 years and there will be people who have grown older and stayed with the station partly out of habit - a lot of stuff that originally attracted them to the station (Galloway, win a car, Football chat) has long gone. The change to Heart gives them a call to arms to review that decision.
Central Scotland is the area I'm most interested in following because of the level of English voices now on the station - I would imagine there's split opinion on here whether that is an issue or not.
Is it any wonder. For the past year the stations have been on death row. No marketing, presenters leaving, music all of the place, people not knowing if they had a job next week. Are you surprised. Could you deliver good results under those conditions.