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France: Radio Stations Attract More Listeners

Posted on: Wednesday, 18 January 2006, 09:00 CST

Text of report by French newspaper La Tribune website on 17 January; subheadings as received

Increasing numbers of French people are listening to their radios. According to the "126 000" Mediametrie poll on our listening habits in November and December 2005, radio stations have gained 354,000 listeners, now totalling 42.2 million loyal listeners. The media that benefited from the important national events - notably the violence in the suburbs and the introduction of the curfew - "is doing well," emphasizes Didier de Saint-Roman, the director of Mediametrie's radio department. He explains that among the "new listeners over this period, 255,000 come from top socio- professional groups".

Over the last two months of the year, the NRJ music station has confirmed its leadership in terms of accumulated audience (the percentage of people who listened at least once to the radio between 0500 hours and 2400 hours) with 12.1 per cent but the radio station lost 0.5 per cent in a one-year period. The station is ahead of the general-interest RTL (11.8 per cent, down 0.3 per cent), France Inter (10.2 per cent, down 0.1 per cent), and Europe 1 (9.2 per cent, down 0.5 per cent). RMC comes out well as its accumulated audience increases from 4.2 per cent to 4.8 per cent. France Info also does well by rising from 9.7 per cent to 9.9 per cent.

140 Minutes a Day

If we take share of the audience (listening time) as the criteria, RTL overwhelmingly dominates the radio industry landscape with 11.4 per cent (down 0.8 per cent) and with an audience that listens to the station 140 minutes a day on average compared to 84 minutes for an NRJ listener. France Inter gets an audience share of 8.8 per cent, down by 0.1 per cent over one year, while Europe 1 is credited with 8 per cent, the same score as last year. They are followed by NRJ (7 per cent, down by 0.6), Nostalgie (5.7 per cent), France Bleue (5.3 per cent), Cherie FM (4.1 per cent), France Info (4 per cent, stable), Skyrock (3.9 per cent), and RMC (3.7 per cent). Radio Classique, a specialized station, achieves the best score in its history with an audience share of 1.1 per cent. RFM has also had a good year in 2005 with an audience share of 3.6 per cent (up 0.7 per cent) and an accumulated audience of 5 per cent (up 0.5 per cent). Finally, the group of independents that is made up of 109 stations stagnated at 10 per cent in audience share. It is progressing in terms of accumulated audience by increasing from 13.6 per cent to 14.2 per cent in one year.

Source: BBC Monitoring Media

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