The New Zealand Commercial Radio Industry has released the S1 2021 radio audience data into the market, revealing over 3.7 million Kiwis were listening to radio weekly.
Of those, almost 3.5 million listen to commercial radio stations.
2020 saw declines of around 15 percent in radio revenue as the COVID impacts were felt by the sector, but audiences have held up in 2021.
Radio Broadcasters Association CEO Jana Rangooni says: “There is some irony in this for the industry as more and more New Zealanders of all ages turned to radio for trusted news, information, music and entertainment with most stations seeing cume increases from the same time last year.”
TRB GM Peter Richardson says: “The survey once again demonstrates radio’s ability to reach a critical mass of New Zealanders who listen to commercial radio each and every week. When one adds in the effectiveness of the medium and the ability to respond rapidly it is clear why radio remains an important medium for advertisers.
“In the last year, the Government’s COVID messaging has made good use of these strengths of radio.”
Newstalk ZB continues to be the country’s top network and grew its audience to the biggest in its history.
In the battle for breakfast audiences, NZME won across key audience groups with either Newstalk ZB’s Mike Hosking Breakfast Show or ZM’s Fletch, Vaughan and Megan.
NZME Chief Content Officer Mike McClung says: “With 336,800 listeners, Fletch, Vaughan and Megan are the number one music breakfast show in the country with growth of just under 25,000 listeners in this survey period.
“This is a great result for the ZM team – from our on-air announcers, to the production and commercial teams that work so hard behind the scenes.”
MediaWorks also achieved its highest ever audience share with 53.6 percent and reached the most listeners ever with an increase of 115,400 people to more than 2.5 million listeners nationwide.
Six out of the top seven commercial radio stations in the 25-54 demographic are MediaWorks stations.
MediaWorks Director of Content Leon Wratt says: “This is a phenomenal result for MediaWorks and is a reflection of the hard work and dedication of our teams right across the country whose efforts have helped us achieve a record network share and driving more listeners to every one of our brands.”
