Newstalk ZB and Mike Hosking reign supreme in latest GfK commercial radio survey

The Mike Hosking Breakfast show has grown its share to 21% of listeners with 433,359 weekly listeners. Photo / Michael Craig

Newstalk ZB continues its reign at the top of the country’s commercial radio rankings with the king of the breakfast airwaves Mike Hosking also retaining his crown.

ZB has a larger share of the market than any other station and lifted its stake of listeners to 14.9% in the latest GfK radio survey. That’s up from 14.5% in May’s survey.

ZB, according to GfK’s results released today, reaches a cumulative 620,000 listeners each week – the only station in the survey with an audience over 600,000.

The Mike Hosking Breakfast show has grown its share to 21% of listeners, with 433,359 weekly listeners.

Heather du Plessis-Allan. Photo / Michael Craig

Heather du Plessis-Allan leads the drive show rankings with 13.9% of that market.

ZM retained its top place across the 25-54 demographic and the station’s Fletch, Vaughan & Hayley have the most listeners of any music show at breakfast.

ZM and Newstalk ZB are owned by Herald publisher NZME, whose chief executive Michael Boggs said: “We are pleased to see the strength of radio audiences from both the latest GfK survey and the Infinite Dial NZ 2025 research recently completed. That research shows 94% of Kiwis listen to audio on a weekly basis and highlights the strong, stable radio audiences. In addition there was 20% growth in podcast listening and continued adoption of listening on alternative devices.”

In a statement, the Radio Broadcasters Association said, “Total commercial radio cumulative audience reached 3.4 million versus 3.425 million for the same survey period in 2024, with all key commercial demographic audiences reporting similar stability year on year”.

“Resilience of our engaged listening audiences has been a consistent theme over the last few years, with our cumulative (all 10+) weekly audience consistently sitting around 3.4 million people. This stability shows that, as an advertiser, you can use radio knowing it provides consistent and reliable reach to audiences,” Radio Bureau chief executive Alistair Jamison said.