News

Online listening sits at 4.2% versus 3.7% the same time last year - so growing from a small base. The lion's share for digital listening continues to be DAB (65% of all digital listening) - with four in 10 households owning a DAB radio.

Vauxhall has announced a DAB radio upgrade for its commercial vehicle customers, providing digital radio on all its van models.

Weekly DAB reach is at an all time high of 15.3 million adults, up 10% from 13.9 million adults in Q3 2011.

DAB, once more, is the clear market leader, with almost two-thirds (65.2%) of all listening to radio on a digital platform. The internet continues to be a tiny proportion of radio listening. Importantly, the latest figures show it is growing at the same rate as DAB, 7.6% (vs 7.7%) year-on-year.

Overall, DAB radio accounted for 20% of all listening, up from 18% during the same period in 2011. The Absolute Radio Network saw digital listening reach an all time high, with an audience of 2.28 million listeners - the largest digital audience of any commercial station over the past three months, and an increase of 1% on last year's figures.

DAB radio is still the most popular device when it comes to listening to digital radio, accounting for 65.2% of all digital hours. Listening via DTV (digital television) is down 1.8%, however listening online has recorded an increase of 7.7% YoY. DAB hours are 209 million; DTV hours are 49 million; and online hours are 43 million.

Ford Ennals, CEO of Digital Radio UK, says: “It is pleasing to see that DAB has reached record levels of hours, share and reach in this atypical Olympics quarter. Digital stations are showing strong growth in reach, with spoken word and music genre stations performing particularly well.”

Digital radio growth has been increasing rapidly over the last few years.

Harris Broadcast Communications has received a second multi-million dollar Digital Audio Broadcasting (DAB) digital radio contract from Norwegian broadcast network operator Norkring to support the country’s continuing analog-to-digital radio broadcast transition. The contract represents the third phase of the network, and is an extension to the existing agreement to support the world’s largest DAB Digital Radio network.

Successful next-generation infotainment and telematics systems must go beyond connectivity for commonly used features like AM/FM and Bluetooth to also support onboard network connectivity with WLAN and digital radio (HD/DAB).