On 13 November 2026, Médiamétrie published the results of its EAR National survey covering the period from 31 August to 25 October. The picture is a flattering one for the medium: radio is growing on weekdays and at weekends alike. But this wave has a feature that deserves as much attention as the figures themselves: it is the first one conducted with a new data collection method, which allows respondents to answer online.
An upbeat autumn for radio
From Monday to Friday, 37,304,000 people aged 13 and over listen to the radio every day, or 65.3% of the reference population. A year earlier the figure was 36,754,000 (65.1%). That is a gain of 550,000 listeners, an increase of 1.5%. Each listener spends an average of 2 hours 47 minutes a day with radio, two minutes more than in September-October 2025.
Weekends show even stronger momentum, with 31.8 million listeners, up 909,000 year on year. The period was packed with news, as Médiamétrie points out, citing a nationwide high-school student movement, two days of protest against the rising cost of living and the Pope's visit to France.
Phone or internet: a new way of collecting data
Since September 2026, the EAR survey has relied on so-called "mixed-mode" data collection. The first contact is still made by telephone, after which the respondent chooses whether to continue the interview by phone or online. The 23,928 interviews in this wave are the first collected this way. Médiamétrie does not report any break in the data series and publishes its year-on-year comparisons as usual.
La Lettre Pro nevertheless points to a paradox: total audience is rising while the top six stations in the ranking are all declining and fifteen of the twenty-three published lines are down. Cumulative audience does not add up from one station to another, and a listener who names fewer stations can push the total up without benefiting the leaders. Nothing indicates that the switch to an online questionnaire explains this gap, but nothing rules it out either. The November-December wave, due in January, will be the second measured with the same tool and should shed more light on the matter.
A reshuffled ranking
- Les Indés Radios regain first place with 6,544,000 listeners, just ahead of France Inter (6,504,000). Both are down year on year, by 200,000 and 234,000 listeners respectively.
- France Info moves up to third with 4,842,000 listeners, overtaking RTL (4,765,000), which loses 287,000 listeners (-5.7%).
- Europe 1 falls to 2,338,000 listeners, down 452,000 (-16.2%).
- Radio Nova has grown from 970,000 to 2,111,000 listeners in one year and has held steady at that level since the spring.
- Fun Radio loses 485,000 listeners (1,498,000), while Skyrock gains 200,000 (3,181,000).
Music takes the lead
The shift that began in the spring is confirmed: music stations now attract 17,498,000 listeners, compared with 16,266,000 for general-interest stations. A year ago, the latter were still ahead by 115,000 listeners. Over twelve months, music stations gained 768,000 listeners and general-interest stations lost 579,000. General-interest stations keep the larger audience share (38.3% versus 33.1%) thanks to longer listening time, 2 hours 26 minutes against 1 hour 58 minutes, but the gap has narrowed from ten points to five.
What it means for web radio stations
For web radio publishers, two lessons stand out. First, the appetite for music formats keeps growing, which supports themed stations and specialised streams built on curated programming. Second, the arrival of the online questionnaire is a reminder that the way listening is measured has a direct impact on published results. Web radios, which generally track their audience through their own streaming statistics, have every interest in documenting their counting method precisely so that their figures are comparable and credible to advertisers. The next results, in January, will show whether this rise in radio listening is lasting or partly linked to the new tool.
Source : La Lettre Pro