Ratings and Listenership
In February 2010, 6 Music was reported as showing growth in its audience, winning an audience of 695,000 listeners, up 12.3% year-on-year. However, in the quarter to December 2009, its 'reach' (proportion of the adult population who listen for at least 5 minutes in the course of an average week) was 1%, and Total Survey Area share (of total listening time) was 0.4%.
According to the BBC's service review of Radio 2 and 6 Music, published in February 2010, the average age of 6 Music listeners is 36, which it considers too low. The review implied that the deficiency in appeal to female listeners apparent in 2007 was still in existence, and that there should be changes to attract more listeners from ethnic minorities and lower income groups. However, the review did not give details of the scale of these issues.
Following the proposal to close the station, online listening figures rose significantly. The number of unique online listeners rose to an average of 133,653 in March 2010, up 50 per cent on the previous March. When the RAJAR listening figures were released in May 2010, it was revealed that 6 Music had an average of 1.02 million listeners in the first three months of the year, compared to 695,000 the previous year.
In 2011, 6 Music had a total audience of 1.3 million listeners in the three months to 27 March, up from 1.14m in the previous quarter, according to the latest data from the Radio Joint Audience Research (RAJAR) board. Buoyed by shows from high-profile DJs such as Jarvis Cocker, Huey Morgan and Lauren Laverne, 6 Music has also grown its audience from 1.02m in the first quarter of 2010. The station broke more records in 2012, with a total audience of 1.62 million in the third quarter of the year.
Read more about this topic: BBC 6 Music