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Absolute see audience drop by a fifth since rebrand
By CMU Editorial | Published on Friday 30 January 2009
The latest RAJAR figures were announced yesterday, though with all the hoo and haa around ‘Digital Britain’ the quarterly listening figures didn’t get as much attention as usual.
Even radio types were a bit distracted by Lord Carter’s report given its ramblings on the future of digital audio broadcasting, the digital radio system that has taken several knocks recently after Global Radio (then GCap) closed down their digital-only services and Channel 4 dumped its ambitions to launch its own digital radio channels and a second national DAB network.
Carter says DAB is still important for the future of radio, though doesn’t offer much advice on how the recent hiccups in the roll out of the medium can be overcome, other than to put pressure on the BBC to further expand their DAB offering.
Anyway, I digress, back to the RAJARs, and the most interesting figures came from Absolute Radio, who were presumably quite glad most people were distracted from the ratings release given that they have lost about 20% of their listeners since rebranding from Virgin Radio to Absolute. It seems the Virgin brand really is worth something. Or perhaps it’s the on air changes the old Virgin Radio faithful don’t like.
The rock service’s national audience was down from 1.53 million to 1.18 million, while in London, where it has an FM licence, listening figures were down from 958,000 to 836,000.
The station’s new owners were ambivalent about the decline, insisting they weren’t surprised and that it’s early days, that the new identity is still to gain momentum. Some old listeners may also have been confused by the name change they said (that was forced upon them, of course, because their new owners compete with the Virgin Group in India), though given the frequencies remained the same I’m not sure I buy that claim.
Still, Absolute COO Clive Dikens remains optimistic, telling reporters: “Our independent research has shown that our marketing campaign is working and awareness has doubled and a quarter of the population are already aware of the brand. This multi-million investment in marketing will continue, building on this foundation”.
He added: “Absolute Radio has had just 15 weeks to sink into the nation’s ears, Virgin Radio had had 15 years. When Oasis were 15 weeks old they told everyone they were going to be one of the biggest bands in the world. 15 years on, now look at them. We have the same aspirations”. I’m not sure the analogy works – is he saying that if Oasis changed their name they’d lose a fifth of their fans overnight?
