Pretty Songs Are Pretty Popular

Michael Hedges June 13, 2013 Follow on Twitter

Springtime brings the flowering of many things. It’s a time when many broadcasters contemplate changes, revisions and updates, whether the ratings are good or not so good. The objective, of course, is keeping the audience coming back.

In Latvia, public broadcaster Latvijas Radio (LR) leads the national audience survey once again. LR Radio 2 ranked number one with 22.7% market share in the spring quarter among people 12 to 74 years, up from 19.4% in the same period one year on. The Latvian oldies channel has long topped the national surveys.

General interest channel LR Radio 1 placed second in the national survey, 11.3% market share, up from 10.4% and third place year on year. Russian language channel LR Radio 4 ranked 4th with 5.9% market share, down from 7.2%.

“There’s evidence that Radio 2 listeners are not only interested in pretty songs,” said Latvian Radio director Janis Siksnis to BNS (June 6). “They are also ready for something more serious but not, of course, the same as Radio 1. Mr. Siksnis plans to add new speech-based programming and maybe a little more focus on Latvia’s capital city Riga. “However, we are required to keep our audience.” Not many years ago Latvian public radio was threatened with bankruptcy.

Adult-contemporary Radio Skonto remained the top rated privately owned channel in the national survey and third place overall with a 9.9% market share, down from 11.5% year on year. Radio SWH, pop music channel owned by Communicorp (Ireland), ranked 5th with 5.3% market share, down from 5.8%. Hit music channel Star FM, owned by Modern Times Group (Sweden), posted 4.5% market share for 6th place nationally, up from 8th place and 3.7% market share one year on.

European Hit Radio, a Euro-pop music channel, ranked 7th nationally with 4.4% market share, down from 6.6% and 5th place year on year. Russian language dance station Top Radio placed 8th with 3.6% market share, up from 2.4%. Hit music Russian language station Russkoje Radio sank to 9th place with 3.6% market share, down from 5.6% and 7th place one year on. Rounding out the top ten in the national survey was Russian language SWH+, an adult contemporary format station owned by Communicorp, with 3.5% market share, up from 2.9%.

Vastly different was the spring radio audience survey for Riga. Radio Skonto topped the charts in the more cosmopolitan city with 11.5% market share. LR Radio 1 placed 2nd with 9.9% market share, followed by Radio 2 with 9.0% and Radio 4 with 7.7%. Radio Skonto, locally owned, is branded as a Riga station and has been in the market for twenty years. LR Radio 2 seems more popular with the older, more rural audience.

Russian language SWH+ and Russkoje Radio ranked 5th and 6th in Riga, notable as three of the top six stations broadcast in Russian. About one-third of Latvia’s population are native Russian speakers, many stranded by the fall of the Soviet Union. A referendum on adopting Russian as an official national language failed overwhelmingly in 2012.

Overall radio listening in Latvia dropped to 78% from 82% one year on and average time spent listening dropped to 268 minutes from 273. TNS Latvia conducts quarterly recall-based radio audience surveys.

See also in ftmKnowledge

Europe’s Radio – Northern Europe

Northern Europe’s radio has a very digital sound. And change is in the air. Economic challenges abound for both public and commercial broadcasters. The ftm Knowledge file reports on Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Iceland, Ireland, Latvia, Lithuania, Norway, Sweden and the UK. 144 pages PDF includes Resources (November 2012)

Order here