“The results of the 19th wave are a perfect illustration of our teams’ dedicated efforts at each of RTL Belgium’s radio stations headed by Eric Adelbrecht,” says Philippe Delusinne, CEO of RTL Belgium. “Bel RTL has resumed its logical position as leader. At the same time, Radio Contact has stabilised to consolidate its number one status among the music stations in the French Community. We can do nothing but rejoice in an extremely competitive market, made more difficult by the new frequency plan.”
Generalist radio standard Bel RTL regained its leading position with an 18.9 per cent audience share of listeners age 12 and up, a respective increase of 1.7 and 0.9 points over the 18th and 17th waves. Bel RTL’s rise can also be explained by a recapturing of listeners (+1 per cent in daily coverage) and a significant increase in listening duration (+6 per cent).
Radio Contact stabilised its excellent performance of the 18th wave with an audience share of 17.6 per cent (compared to 17.9 per cent in the 18th wave and 17.2 per cent in the 17th wave). It achieved this very strong level after introducing various changes in the September 2009 schedule, which have started to bear fruit.
“It’s a remarkable result overall,” adds RTL Belgium’s General Manager Freddy Tacheny. “Our strategy of complementarity between our transmitters Bel RTL and Radio Contact has taken effect. We are obviously very satisfied to see Radio Contact maintain such a market share level, the second highest to be achieved since the exceptional performance of the previous wave. We are delighted to see how the many changes made in Bel RTL’s schedule in September 2009 have been well received by our listeners. Bel RTL’s refocusing on its values of proximity along with better exploitation of synergies with RTL-TVI, particularly for news, have incontestably borne fruit.”