But I’d just mention the obvious: money comes into commercial radio companies from time spent listening (“total hours”). The amount of actual people listening is fairly immaterial; the money comes from how long, in total, people listen. If your total hours are too low, you don’t even make the ad schedule.

If you look at the table underneath (Page 5), you’ll see that it includes listening once a month, and less often.

As you say, the report calculates listening every day or most days as being 2.5m people. In fact, that’s not a long way away from what the main RAJAR says listen on a weekly basis. Lots of people listen, but they listen for shorter periods of time compared with analogue methods.

What it boils down to is lots of people listening for relatively short periods of time via the internet.

Again – remember that these reports and the main RAJAR survey are carried out using very different methodologies. The Internet/Podcast surveys in particular are carried out amongst people who “respondents who had claimed to listen to the radio via the Internet and / or download Podcasts.”

Ignore my comments about conspiracies. But I don’t think there’s an agenda either. If listeners prefer listening via the internet than other digital forms, then that’s what radio services will offer. Unfortunately bandwidth precludes mass-scale listening. Nonetheless, for at-work listening, listen again, wifi radios and so on, internet listening will grow.

Indeed it’s quite clear that internet radio listening is growing every quarter. But so are other forms of digital listening.

In fact, under the Report section it says:

“Over a quarter (28.9%) of the UK’s adult population (those aged 15 or over) have listened to radio via the Internet. That equates to 14.5 million people.
Two thirds of these, or 18.8% of the adult population, listen at least once a week, with 5% listening via the Internet every day or most days – that’s 2.5 million people.”

I didn’t say there is a “conspiracy”, only an agenda. Not the same thing at all.

The 3.2% share of all listening figure James is quoting refers to the cumulative amount of time spent listening via digital television – data that is sourced from Q4 2008 RAJAR.

The same survey also shows that 2.0% of listening is via the internet (11.4% is via DAB).

These are weekly numbers, and as such, aren’t comparable with the Podcasting and Radio Listening via the Internet Surveys. Indeed, there’s a more recent survey that you might want to look at showing the reach number has grown to 16.1m from 14.5m.

But this is ever listen and not weekly listening. So it includes lots of people who only occassionally listen via the internet.

Note that these surveys have very different methodologies from each other – the full RAJAR data release is based on something like 30,000+ diaries, while the internet/podcasting survey was based on 1,142 people filling in a self-completion questionnaire.

Both are valid samples, but not directly comparable statistically. In any case, they’re measuring different things.

I don’t think the UK radio industry (of which I’m a member) has quite the “agenda” that you think it has. Commercial radio groups wouldn’t be upgrading their websites and launching applications for things like the iPhone if that were the case. And the BBC wouldn’t be ever improving it’s iPlayer and streaming technology if it was all a conspiracy to get everyone to listen via DAB or analogue.

“14.5 million people (up from 12m in Survey 1) have claimed to listen to radio via the Internet, including 10.9 million listening live (up from 9m) and 9.3 million who have used Listen Again services (up from 7.6m).”

That is in sharp contrast to figures you have quoted from RAJAR about radio listening in the UK via the Internet – although as they (the lower figures) fit into the agenda of the UK radio industry it is the one you see used all the time.

It will be about 20 more years before Sky+ catches up