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Non-commercial radio survey: Radio New Zealand rises, RNZ National claims biggest audience

GfK’s first non-commercial radio survey of 2019 is out, showing Radio New Zealand’s audience is up 60,000 year-on-year to reach 696,600 New Zealanders each week, while RNZ National’s 616,200 listeners makes it the biggest station in the country.

RNZ National’s cumulative weekly audience (10+) is up 46,800 listeners from the 569,400 tuning in during the first survey of 2018. It’s also up from the 603,800 reported to be listening to the station in the fourth, and final survey of 2018.

And as well as beating its previous results, the cumulative audience of 616,200 listeners also gives the station the biggest audience in New Zealand when looking at GfK’s commercial radio survey, released earlier this month.

The Edge follows behind RNZ National with a weekly cumulative audience (10+) of 608,500 listeners, while the next biggest is Newstalk ZB with 555,600 weekly listeners.

  • A full rundown of the commercial results can be seen here.

Meanwhile, RNZ Concert has also shown growth compared to the first survey of 2018 with a weekly cumulative audience of 182,700 people. This is an increase of 36,900 year-on-year for the network.

RNZ head of radio and music David Allan says it’s a very solid talk quarter, but the result is more a reflection of the strong performances by all RNZ programmes over the past twelve months.

“There is clearly public demand for a trusted source of quality journalism, news, information, music and entertainment.”

And those programmes are set for a change-up with the broadcaster launching First Up, a new 5am news and current affairs programme with Indira Stewart on 6 May, while Corin Dann will be joining Susie Ferguson and the Morning Report team on the same day.

Looking at the survey’s weekday 6am-9am figures, Morning Report’s weekly cumulative audience (10+) is up 6,200 since the last survey, with 464,000 New Zealanders tuning in.

That audience puts RNZ ahead of the commercial talkback station Newstalk ZB in the 6am-9am timeslot. According to the commercial survey, Newstalk ZB reaches a cumulative audience of 408,400 in the timeslot.

According to RNZ, its growth is not limited to radio waves with it also reporting growth across its digital channels.

More than 817,000 users now access the RNZ website during a typical week, an increase of 32 percent year-on-year, and there were on average over 1,581,000 monthly audio downloads from rnz.co.nz – up 26 percent over the equivalent period in 2018.

And for those not visiting rnz.co.nz, RNZ continues to reach audiences of other media organisations, with a growing number of content sharing partnerships.

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