Analysis: first nationwide figures gathered since 2020 will indicate if pandemic has changed listening habits
When Rupert Murdoch launched Times Radio last summer, he was making an ambitious and expensive attempt to win over listeners from
BBC Radio 4 and 5Live. But almost 18 months later, none of the staff, the public or the many politicians who appear on the talk radio station really know whether anyone is actually listening.
That will change on Wednesday morning, when all
UK radio stations will receive the first industry-wide listening figures gathered since March 2020. It will be a moment of reckoning, not just for Murdoch’s new station, but for the wider
British radio industry – which will be looking to see whether the pandemic has radically changed the public’s listening habits.