Digital figures all a bit confused

Even the MediaGuardian seems a bit confused as to if the 6Music and BBC Radio 7 audience figures are terrible - which the three month drop suggests - or great, as the year-on-year growth would say.

Really, it might just say that Rajar isn't any good at counting digital audiences.

In other Rajar news, Moyles is still adding listeners, but not as quickly as Wogan, in the battle for the title 'The most-listened to breakfast show by a man substantially older than his target audience'.

40,000 people can be wrong: George Lamb's audience figures

Rajar, the audience counting people, have released some figures breaking down digital listening hour-by-hour. This reveals that George Lamb is the most-listened to 6Music show on weekdays, but his peak comes in at just 40,000; he's bested by Adam and Joe at weekends.

The numbers themselves are a little dodgy - the RAJAR sample is so teeny, and its methodology so creaky, you could assume that those 40,000 are anywhere between 5,000 and a third of a million - but what they tell about the patterns of audience for digital stations is interesting.

Old radio peaks at breakfast. Digital doesn't. BBC Radio 7 peaks after 7pm at night - which hasn't been prime time for radio since Grace Archer went back in to help the horses. Planet Rock is at its busiest at lunchtime - as is Heat. And nobody at all listens to Absolute Radio Extreme (previously known as nobody at all listens to one of Virgin's digital networks) - it's biggest audience is 8,000, which must be bloody near immeasurable.

What's missing from all these figures, though, is online, overseas and on demand listening. So we know that Gideon Coe has 12,000 listeners in the UK when the show comes on at 9pm, but not how many people will be tuned in elsewhere, or listening to the programme the following morning. Perhaps while George Lamb is on.