Advertisers stay tuned to Jazz FM

JAZZ FM's upmarket audience continues to pull in the advertisers at a cool rate. In the six months to last December, while national radio advertising spend fell by 9%, Jazz FM's ad revenues rose by 9%.

Year-on-year the group's stations, in London and the North West, grew their audiences by 20%.

Chief executive Richard Wheatley said: 'In a period like this, advertisers become much more selective and target their spending. With 70% of our audience in the ABC1 25-to-45-year-old bracket, our closest crossover is Radio 4 which, thank goodness, doesn't take advertising.'

He said advertising from the likes of bars, hotels, travel agents and car dealers, who buy direct from the stations rather than through ad agencies, had been particularly strong.

The audience dipped for about four weeks after 11 September as listeners switched to Radio 4's news coverage, but the first quarter of this calendar year has seen them return big time. Sales of CDs, which account for 60% of revenues, rose by 20%.

Turnover was up by 15% to £4.5m in the half-year with operating profits up from £65,000 to £105,000. But after an extra £225,000 spending on digital radio there was a pre-tax loss of £181,000 compared with a profit of £60,000.