Fight for top radio spot

Marcus Lush. Photo / Herald on Sunday

Newstalk ZB and rival station The Rock are fighting for top spot as New Zealand's favourite station in the latest radio ratings survey.

But the survey, conducted by Research International every six months, shows a drop in overall listeners nationally at nearly every station surveyed.

Stations such as Newstalk ZB, Radio Sport, ZM, Classic Hits and Radio Hauraki - all owned by The Radio Network - have lost cumulative listeners nationally, for all people aged 10 and above.

MediaWorks has also lost listeners across all stations - except for a slight rise at RadioLive with an additional 3700 listeners and 14,400 extra listeners at Mai FM.

The Rock is down 5500 listeners nationwide but hangs on to the top spot overall with an 11.6 per cent station share.

In talk radio, Newstalk ZB comes in just behind The Rock with an 11.1 per cent share nationally but retains the most listeners - 178,000 each week. However, this number is down from 205,200 in April's survey.

Nationally, ZB has also lost 24,000 listeners.

Newstalk ZB's breakfast show, hosted by Mike Hosking, has lost 16,500 listeners nationally. He has 264,000 listeners.

At RadioLive's morning show, Marcus Lush hasn't budged since the last survey with 84,000 listeners.

Nationally, RadioLive has upped its station share from 3.3 per cent to 3.7 per cent. Group programme director for MediaWorks Radio, Jana Rangooni, said that overall, New Zealand's breakfast radio audience had seen a "minimal" decline.