Non-commercial radio survey results: RNZ audience holds steady

The second GfK non-commercial radio industry survey for 2019 shows Radio New Zealand’s audience numbers remain strong – with 694,700 New Zealanders (10+) tuning into RNZ National and RNZ Concert each week.

The latest results do show a slight decline from the previous survey which had the reach at 696,600 New Zealanders, a record high figure up 60,000 from the final survey of 2018.

Despite growing in listener numbers by 10,700 to 626,900, RNZ National has lost its crown of biggest station in the country to MediaWorks’s The Edge which came in at 630,400 listeners in the latest commercial survey published last week.

Among all radio listening in New Zealand, RNZ National has a market share of 11.7 percent, while RNZ Concert has a 2.2 percent share, giving the RNZ combo a combined share of 13.9 percent nationwide.

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

RNZ Concert’s cumulative audience dropped 10,100 from the previous survey to 172,600 listeners – after growing by 36,900 listeners throughout 2018. The typical RNZ Concert listener is now tuning in for more than eight and a half hours each week.

Results in the all-important Breakfast period (weekdays 6am-9am) show Morning Report increased audiences year-on-year but was also down from the first survey of 2019 at 459,500. 

The biggest show growth survey-to-survey was in the weeknights 7pm-12am slot, with Nights with Bryan Crump increasing in listenership by 15,200 to 217,800. The 4pm-7pm slot, which includes Checkpoint, also saw an increase of 8,100 to 358,000.

Midnight-to-midnight on Sundays also increased by 5,000 to 377,100.

RNZ head of radio and music David Allan says the results show another strong performance for Radio New Zealand, with RNZ National hitting its second-highest GfK audience ever. 

“It’s a great reward for all our teams, whose commitment to original content and engagement is fantastic and obviously well appreciated by our listeners.

“The audience thirst for quality journalism, news, information, music and entertainment has resulted in great results for our key programmes and reinforces the importance of RNZ in the total New Zealand radio market.”

The radio results are boosted by RNZ’s significant growth across digital channels. More than 793,000 users now access the RNZ website during a typical week, an increase of 32 percent year-on-year. There was also an average of more than 1.8 million monthly audio downloads from rnz.co.nz – up 27 percent from the equivalent period in 2018.

RNZ also continues to reach audiences through collaborative partnerships with major media organisations, including Stuff, NZME, MSN, TVNZ and Bauer.