Global celebrate Radio listener figures

The UK’s biggest commercial radio company Global celebrates its best-ever audience results.

The company has scored its highest ever reach, hours and share. Global leads the commercial radio market in all measures, with a record-breaking 25.8m weekly listeners, 242m hours and 24% share.

Global also has the top three commercial radio brands in the UK – Heart, Capital and Smooth – and the top two commercial breakfast shows in the UK – Heart Breakfast with Jamie Theakston & Amanda Holden (3.9m) and Capital Breakfast with Roman Kemp (2.5m).

News and nostalgia fuel huge growth for Global as LBC continues to set records, and decades stations Heart 70s, 80s, 90s, plus Heart Dance and Gold experience incredible gains.

LBC, the UK’s number one commercial talk brand, breaks its ninth consecutive RAJAR record as it grows its audience by 291,000 listeners in three months, now reaching a massive 3.5m weekly listeners. A busy news agenda over the last quarter meant more people are tuning in than ever before as LBC cements its role as the voice of the nation and celebrates its highest reach in its 49-year history.

Nick Ferrari at Breakfast and James O’Brien both smash new audience records, with 1.4m weekly listeners tuning in to each show every week. In the hotly contested London market, LBC leads by a significant margin in hours and share. Rolling news station LBC News smashes through the 1m listener mark for the first time. 

Heart’s decades stations 70s, 80s, 90s, plus Heart Dance and Gold all experience huge audience gains as the nation turns up the nostalgia. Heart 70s hits a record breaking 438,000 listeners, welcoming nearly 120,000 new listeners (37% growth) in three months.

Heart 80s also grows, now reaching 1.4m weekly listeners, and Heart 90s hits a new high of 793,000 listeners, adding an extraordinary 248,000 new listeners in the last quarter (46% growth).

Heart Dance also smashes a new record, adding 310,000 new listeners, taking its audience reach to 658,000 (89% growth). Gold, playing the greatest hits of all time, adds 103,000 new listeners in three months, now reaching 1.4m weekly listeners.

Elsewhere at Global, Heart scores a massive 10.2m weekly listeners, extending its reign as the UK’s biggest commercial radio brand and growing in hours and share, with listeners listening for longer. The Heart brand has more than 2.5m more listeners than Radio 1.

 Heart Breakfast’s Jamie Theakston and Amanda Holden grow their audience, increasing in reach, hours and share. Jamie and Amanda have the biggest show on commercial radio, and biggest commercial breakfast show in the UK, with 3.9m listeners tuning in every week.

 Global’s newest station Capital Dance – fronted by dance music icon MistaJam – continues its phenomenal rise as it grows its audience by over a third (208,000 listeners) in just three months to 800,000 listeners.

Capital remains the UK’s no.1 hit music brand with 7.5m weekly listeners across the UK, extending its reach over the Kiss brand nationally with over 3m more listeners tuning in every week. In London, Capital remains the No.1 hit music station with 1.5m weekly listeners, ahead of both Radio 1 and Kiss in the nation’s capital.  

On social, Capital is the most followed radio brand in the world on TikTok (and Capital’s Jingle Bell Ball with Barclaycard was live streamed on TikTok). LBC drives over 30 million video views a month across the social platforms and Classic FM is the largest arts page on Facebook in the world. 

*RAJAR figures for Q1 2022, 3rd January 2022 – 3rd April 2022. All stations and groups results are reported on their specified reporting period and TSA (Total Survey Area).