MALAYSIA – The Radio Audience Measurement conducted by GfK in the first half of 2022, in partnership with Commercial Radio Malaysia (CRM), revealed that there are 21,273,000 radio listeners every week, each spending an average of 13 hours and 36 minutes tuned in.
The most recent survey conducted over six weeks from February 28 to April 2 polled 6,000 unique individuals aged 10 years and above in Peninsular Malaysia.
The lifting of COVID-19 restrictions across the country and resumption of normalcy in daily lives and businesses helped drive radio consumption to a higher level. Results from the study revealed a rise in radio listening across all locations. Both in-car and elsewhere listening have returned to pre-COVID level, with 16,088,000 registered weekly car-listeners, while elsewhere recorded 1,205,000.
15,424,000 listeners continue to tune in to the radio at home every week, followed by 2,274,000 who listen to the radio at their workplace.
The GfK study shows the breakfast timeslot (Monday to Friday, 6 am to 10 am) recording the highest number of listeners at 15,315,000, with the drive segment (Monday to Friday, 4 pm to 8 pm) and morning segment (Monday to Friday, 10 am to 1 pm) trailing closely behind at nearly 14,960,000 and 13,264,000 listeners respectively. Monday to Friday, 8 pm to 12-midnight segments recorded the highest growth in listenership, with 8,458,000 listeners; contributing an increase of 36 per cent compared to results from the previous wave.
The GfK survey also revealed that the 25 to 39 age segment, which totaled 6,571,000 listeners, are spending more time tuned in, with an average listener spending more than 14 hours listening to radio in a week. 83 per cent (5,429,000) of them are listening to radio in the car on an average week, while home-listeners make up 67 per cent (4,428,000) weekly.
FM radio sets remained the most popular way to access radio with 19,447,000 weekly listeners. According to the study, an increasing number are accessing radio via television and mobile phones, which registered a growth in audience size to 5,041,000 and 3,794,000 weekly listeners, respectively.
“Local coverage, trust, mobility and its ability to foster participation and engagement in the community are some of the reasons why radio will continue to stay relevant and play an important role to listeners’ daily lives,” said June Pang, Malaysia Media Measurement Lead at GfK.
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