RAJAR: BBC Asian Network strengthens its hold at No.1

The BBC Asian Network strengthened its hold at the No.1 position in Q2/19 data published today by RAJAR.

The BBC Asian Network added 78,000 listeners during the quarter, up from 536,000 listeners to 614,000 listeners currently. It was up by 14.6% quarter-on-quarter but it was down from this time last year. The station last year during the same period registered 672,000 listeners – down by 8.6%. The BBC Asian Network’s listening hours were down again from 4.3 hours to 4.0 hours in this quarter. Its share was down from 0.3% last year to 0.2% this quarter.

The second national Asian station, Sunrise Radio also witnessed a jump in its audience figures. The station was up from 338,000 listeners in Q1/19 to 372,000 listeners in Q2/19. In further encouraging news for the station, Sunrise Radio was up year-on-year by 12.7%. This time last year, Sunrise Radio registered a reach of 330,000 listeners. The station’s listening hours were down from 4.2 hours to 3.8 hours. Its share was down from 0.02% last year to 0.01% this quarter.

Tony Lit, MBE & Managing Director Sunrise Radio, told BizAsiaLive.com, “I am pleased to say that with the release of RAJAR Q2/2019 this morning Sunrise Radio now in its 30th year of broadcasting is confirmed as the unrivalled market leader in commercial Asian radio, consecutively since its launch in 1989. Sunrise Radio’s national service has had a year on year weekly audience growth of 10% and is also up on Q1 2019. The London service has had a year on year weekly audience growth of over 23% and also is up on Q1 2019. Nationally our weekly audience is over 4 times bigger than the weekly audience of our nearest national commercial Asian radio competitor and in London our weekly audience is more than 2 times bigger than the weekly audience of our nearest London commercial Asian radio competitor. This is great news as we approach our big landmark 30th birthday.

Our audience continues to grow in London and Nationally on DAB, and we’re also continuing to see a significant growth in our audience of those listening live on Sunriseradio.com and downloads of our free App, ‘Sunrise Radio National’ are coming in thick and fast.”

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Other UK based Asian radio stations such as Radio XL in Birmingham, Sabras Radio in Leicester, Asian Sound in Manchester, Sunrise Radio in Yorkshire and other digital and community Asian radio stations do not subscribe to RAJAR.