Chris Evans’ Radio 2 breakfast show lost more than 400,000 listeners in the three months after he quit Top Gear, as the BBC’s early morning programmes saw their audiences decline across the board.
Evans’ show saw its weekly reach fall to 9.06 million, as Radio 2 saw a smaller overall decline in audience of about 150,000 listeners to 15.1 million, according to the latest figures released by audience research body Rajar.
The Radio 2 presenter quit as host of Top Gear on 4 July.
Nick Grimshaw’s Radio 1 breakfast show resumed its downward trajectory to hit 5.25 million, shedding almost 200,000 listeners after appearing to have put a halt to its audience decline in the preceding quarter. His decline came as his Radio 1 predecessor, Chris Moyles, continued to grow his audience at commercial station Radio X, which reached an all-time high reach of 1.3 million.
However, Radio 1 as a whole managed to reverse its recent run of audience declines, adding more than 400,000 listeners to take it to an audience of 9.87 million.
Ben Cooper, controller of Radio 1 and 1Xtra, said: “Reaching 11 million people and putting on a further half a million 10- to 24-year-olds shows that Radio 1 is doing a great job for young listeners, although as ever, Rajar figures are only part of the picture and should be seen alongside the increase to 1.5 million views a day on our YouTube channel and our 8.5 million users on social media.”
Cooper recently told the Guardian that he wanted to become the “Netflix of radio”, and that the station was competing against games such as Pokemon Go and Minecraft to attract young listeners.
Radio 3’s breakfast show saw a drop in listeners from 751,000 in the second quarter to 579,000 in the third quarter .
Radio 4’s Today programme also saw a big fall, losing about 200,000 of the almost 500,000 listeners it picked up during the period between April and June when the nation was gearing up for the EU referendum. Radio 4 as a whole saw its total audience fall to 11.2 million during the quarter, down from a record high of 11.5 million in the news-packed preceding three months.
6 Music broke its audience record for the fifth quarter in a row, drawing 2.34 million listeners.
Its strong performance, alongside that of Radio 1, helped offset falls elsewhere, with the BBC’s total national radio audience down by just 0.7% to stay above 32 million.
Meanwhile, national commercial radio stations posted strong growth during the quarter, up 7.4% to more than 9.5 million listeners. The UK’s most popular commercial radio brands, Heart and Capital, reached record audiences.
Commercial radio stations have been eating into the BBC’s dominance. Once local local stations are included, the BBC’s total share of the radio listening audience declined to 51.5% from 53.3% a year earlier.
However, when it comes to national stations alone the BBC is still well ahead, with a 44.4% share, compared with national commercial radio’s 17.1%.
