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RAJAR results: Asian Network down, Sunrise up

Today saw the RAJAR results announced of the last quarter. Subtle changes have been spotted between two of the UK’s leading radio stations-BBC Asian Network and Sunrise Radio.

BBC Asian Network has seen a little drop in reach from 443,000 listeners a few months ago to the current 440,000. When compared to this time last year, the station has lost 50,000 listeners in audience reach. The audience share of Asian Network has remained steady at 2% but down 1% from this time last year. Nevertheless the station remains to be one of the BBC’s most popular digital radio services.

A spokesman for the Asian Network remained optimistic about the station’s growth and looked to future changes: “We’re a young network and confident that in the longer term we are growing as demonstrated by our growth since we started in 2002. Our figures this quarter are stable quarter on quarter although slightly down year on year.”

Sunrise Radio on the other hand has reason to celebrate after upping its audience from 447,000 last quarter to 467,000. However this result seems to be much lower than its high of last year, which figured at 581,00 listeners. Sunrise’s digital station Yarr Radio, which is available only on DAB and Sky Digital has seen an increase to 19,000 and even better news for Sunrise?s new Kismat Radio. Kismat, specialises in speech based shows and music for the older audience; it has seen its audience treble from 24,000 (last year) to an amazing 72,000.

Club Asia, London’s youth Asian station does not subscribe to RAJAR but to rival GFK who last year measured the weekly reach of 333,000 across London on 963+972am, 62,000 listeners on Sky Digital EPG 895 and 42,000 online.

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

Radio One also saw a rise in audience during the last three months. It saw an increase to over 10 million listeners, breaking the all-important 10 million barrier after two years lingering around the 9 million mark. At the time of publishing Biz Asia had not received audience figures of Bobby and Nihal?s weekly show.