James Cridland

Time spent listening to Australian commercial radio

A graph showing Australian weekly hours

An email I got from the CRA, from the last survey, is interesting. The headline - Commercial Radio grows from breakfast to bedtime as more Australians listen for longer - got me wondering.

There are of course “more Australians” listening to commercial radio because there are more Australians - the last census showed a population growth of 8.6% in just five years. But that’s only half the story: the number of listeners to commercial radio is actually growing faster than the population growth: up 2.8% year-on-year.

However, “Australian listen for longer” was new: I’d not seen any data showing listening time for radio. The regular surveys don’t publish anything to do with listening time; and for a long time, I’ve wondered how Australian commercial radio compared.

So, I asked the CRA’s new PR person - expecting a polite no - whether they could share exactly how long Australians are spending with commercial radio every week, and how that compared with five years ago. Would it be like we are seeing in Europe?

And I got the above graph back. It’s a pretty rosy look for commercial radio - remaining remarkably steady over the last five years at around 12 hours 10 minutes over the last year. Worthwhile noting that there’s no appreciable difference after the departure of Kyle & Jackie O (S2/26 or thereabouts). In survey 6, the claim “Australians are also spending more time each week with commercial radio” is true - the total time spent listening was up from S5’s 12 hours 4 minutes to S6’s 12 hours 8 minutes.

If I take anything from this graph, it’s the recovery of radio post-COVID in 2022; and to learn more about whatever happened in 2025!

For comparison: Aussies are spending 12.1 hours a week with commercial radio; the British are only spending 9.7 hours with commercial radio in the UK (RAJAR Q2/26). Perhaps this is a story of the relative audience figures of the BBC (42.6% share in the UK) vs the Australian ABC (15.5% share in Brisbane).

Very interesting detail; and worthwhile reminding ourselves how resilient radio is. I’m grateful to the CRA for sharing this.

(Also - hat-tip to those doing charts that contain hours and minutes. Redrawing this graph was a bloody nightmare. That’s not fun, is it?)

RCS

Classifieds

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  • Speaking of which, in the US, Nielsen published a new audio report this week. It’s free and ungated to download. The headline numbers: Radio reaches 92% of U.S. adults each month, or more than 242 million consumers. That puts it ahead of TV-connected devices (90%), smartphones (87%), and live and time-shifted TV (85%). Radio also reaches 87% of adults ages 18–34, the group most often written off as “digital only.“

  • Should on-air talent be bonussed on airtime revenue? An interesting thought from Paul Harper. And, his suggestion that “there was a incredibly negative “them” and “us” culture between on air and “upstairs”.” is not entirely unusual. I’ve worked at stations where there were quarterly or annual total-station targets with ratings and revenue; but while revenue is wholly within the gift of the radio station team, ratings isn’t. But maybe - thinking on this - on-air talent should be bonussed on airtime revenue, as long as they participate in the process enough (client visits, live reads, etc).

  • Here’s a 30-minute documentary about Radio Paradise. “Great story and the founder has a great passion about the medium and I couldn’t agree more with his views,” says Radioland reader Dirk Soetens.

  • Edison Research is excitedly promoting a crosstab explorer for its Share of Ear data; but this page contains one very interesting graph. The United States is very politically split between the left and the right - to an extent that I find quite baffling; but the graph shows how different radio listening is for Democrats and Republicans - and there’s a stark difference. My assumption is that there’s precious little talkback radio specifically for Democrats: but the difference is large.

  • Oooh! The BKS ES006 radio receiver is interesting. It’s a multi-standard radio (you know, of the type I was asking for last year). Apparently, one version supports AM, DRM-AM, FM, DRM-FM, SW, DRM-SW, and DAB+. The DRM Consortium initially wasn’t a fan, and poured cold water on my idea for a multi-standard radio. “Who needs such a complex and expensive catch-all receiver?” asked Ruxandra Obreja at the time. But now, the DRM Consortium is demonstrating the BKS ES006 complex catch-all reciever on its socials, so perhaps there’s the answer.

  • A while back I was suggesting here that the BBC really ought to be streaming the BBC News channel on YouTube. They’ve just started - it’s now available in many parts of the world via the BBC News YouTube channel. I can’t link directly to the live stream, since it’s different depending where you’re watching (you’ll see local weather for your part of the world, as well as local times in the programme promos). This should be making the BBC money; but should also be acting as a piece of marketing for the Corporation. (What it does to the BBC’s ill-conceived paywall in the US is anyone’s guess.) The only thing that’s a disappointment is that the ad breaks are full of nothing other than badly-edited music and a caption saying “We’ll be right back” - it used to be better filling the ad breaks than this.

  • Thank you, Jon Curnow, for sending over three decent coffees! - and to John McDermott for doing similar!

  • In my blog, and nothing to do with radio: Google’s /url redirector, and how to spot AI emails; some handy sieve filter examples; and a tedious guide to airport lounges in Singapore Airport.

Where I am speaking next

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