Audience Measures

Below, I have listed the important factors that are taken into account when gauging the audience for radio stations.

The average audience: is the average number of people listening to a particular station during a certain period of time.

Reach or cumulative audience: The number of individual people who listen to a radio station during a longer time period than the basic unit, for example, a quarter or an hour. As the time period grows so does the reach but more slowly.

However, in the case of the diary surveys, the cumulative audiences are determined by the length of the diary since they can only rely on the time period covered.

Audience Share: The percentage of hours that stations gain from the listening figures given at any time period. For example, the more popular the radio station, the larger the share they have of the listening hours. This is dependent on the number of radio stations broadcasting and the duration people spend listening to the radio.

Audience share can also be useful in comparing the demographic groups since stations are more likely receive their larger portions of the audience share from their target audiences.

Since the share is often calculated using time units throughout the day, the audience share can also help the stations pinpoint both the weaker and more successful shows, helping the station to increase its popularity and consequently its listening figures.  

Duration of listening: The average time audiences spend listening. To get the figures of the people who actually listen to the radio, the average audience figure is divided by reach and then multiplied by length of the time period.

Impressions/Impacts: A measure used by advertisers, this is the sum of the audience at specified times such as when advertisements are broadcast. Higher impact figures allow radio stations to attract advertisers and consequently finance.

Frequency-average and distribution: Another measure that is mainly used for advertising purposes, since it provides the answers about how often listeners have heard an advertisement. The frequency is normally based on the entire population since that is the desired target audience for advertisers in general.

Loyalty: Time spent listening to one station divided by the time spent listening to other stations, for example, if listeners only listen to one station then their loyalty to that station would be 100%.