Mattie Valk and Marieke Elsinga have the image that they are the major crowd pullers of Dutch radio, but that image is now collapsing like a house of cards. “Only 200,000 people are listening!”
The new way in which the listening figures are measured is a huge change, according to Luuk Ikink. For a long time, the scores of radio stations were based on a group of people who wrote something down in a notebook, but since this year there has been a method that automatically records their listening behaviour. So much more accurate.
Mattie and Mary
The consequence? The number of radio listeners appears to be dramatically lower than was thought for years. “What is interesting is that the results are quite shocking. I think they are there in the radio world… They don’t seem to be shocked by it, but I think the shock effect is still to come,” says Luuk Ikink in the latest BLVD Podcast.
The most poignant example? Luuk: “It appears, for example, that far fewer people listen to the radio, for example Qmusic, just to catch the largest channel in the Netherlands. They also have the biggest morning show there: Mattie & Marieke.”
Audience trap
Mattie & Marieke are not such a hit at all. “They always assumed they had 465,000 listeners at about nine o’clock in the morning. That was the case in the last quarter of 2022, when the old measurement method was still used for calculations. Now it turns out that it is not 465 thousand people, but 198 thousand people.”
Colleague Rob Goossens shocked: “Okay, that is a very big difference.”
Luuk: “That is a huge difference.”
Implications
It also applies to other programs, says Luuk. “On the Radio 1 Journaal it was 343 thousand and now it appears to be 169 thousand. That really is a huge difference in how many people listen to radio.”
Luuk wonders how advertisers will react. “I am very curious what advertisers will do with these figures. I can imagine that they will say: should we pay the same rates if far fewer people listen?”
Less salary
And so the new listening figure measurement can also have dramatic consequences for the wallets of famous radio stars such as Mattie and Marieke. Because less advertising income also means lower wages.
Luuk: “For all the great DJs – Mattie, Rob van Someren, Rob Stenders, Ruud de Wild – it’s an interesting time.”
