More on Chrysalis, Emap, GCap Media
Rajar radio market shares
Once again Rajar numbers show the BBC taking audience share from commercial radio, increasing its share of total listening hours to 55.4%: an increase of 0.3% over the previous quarter and 1.2% over the same quarter last year.
Several of GCap Media’s most important stations performed badly. Both Classic FM and Capital Radio have lost audience share but this has been offset by gains at Century. Share of total listening hours slipped 0.1% to 14.4%. Given that the gains have been in less attractive (to advertisers) audiences overall GCap Media continues to lose ground, and, even more importantly, the established downward trend continues.
Emap continues to be pretty much stable. Total listening hours have fallen very slightly, but reach has increased slightly, so the value of Emap’s audience is little changed.
Chrysalis has also lost audience share slightly overall, but it has gained share in the valuable London market - going from 9.1% to 9.7% of listening hours in a single quarter, which is a substantial increase given the time span, accompanied by an almost corresponding increase in reach. Again, overall, there has been no real change.
Commercial radio continues to (very gradually) lose share of a static market to the BBC. At the same time is not recovering as other ad-driven media sub-sectors are at the moment. The combination leaves little reason to expect growth, but nonetheless the sector is quite highly valued with the two main plays on the sector, GCap Media and Chrysalis, on prospective PEs of 24× and 38× respectively.
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