It has been the most talked-about Archers plot in years but the long-running domestic abuse storyline which culminated with Helen Titchener stabbing her abusive husband Rob could not halt a dip in listeners to the Ambridge soap.
The “everyday story of countryfolk” attracted an average weekly reach of 4.7 million listeners in the first three months of this year, down 3% on the final three months of 2015.
It reflected a similar decline in the station’s overall audience, which was also down 3% on the previous quarter, to 10.6 million. Its flagship breakfast programme Today lost 4% of its audience, down to 6.8 million.
It is the first full quarter since the BBC’s former political editor Nick Robinson joined the Today team, succeeding James Naughtie who left last November.
The Archers audience typically hovers just under the 5 million mark, although five years ago it topped 5 million during its 60th anniversary quarter in which Nigel Pargetter memorably fell to his death from the roof of Lower Loxley.
The Archers is proving a digital hit, however, with a record 3.6 million requests via the BBC’s iPlayer to listen to the programme in March 2016.
A Radio 4 spokesperson said: “Radio 4 audiences remain strong and loyal with the station continuing to reach one in five adults in the UK every week.
“It is not unusual for live listening figures to fluctuate slightly and it is natural we would see this reflected in individual programmes.
“Separate to live listening, audiences have been hitting record numbers for programme requests with 13 million Radio 4 programmes requested in April alone. There were 33.3m requests from BBC iPlayer Radio for Radio 4 programmes during this quarter, that’s a 43% increase on last year.”
Earlier this month the BBC’s director general Tony Hall said the Archers domestic violence story had propelled the soap to its highest ever audience appreciation figures.
But the plotline did not go down well with everyone, and one former editor warned against the soap becoming too sensational.
Archers editor Sean O’Connor hailed the online listening figures after the latest official Rajar figures were published on Thursday.
“It’s amazing that a 65-year-old programme can find itself the smash hit of the digital age,” he said.
“These extraordinary figures are an endorsement of the enduring pleasures of the programme and the unique power of radio drama to engage the audience. The story of Helen and Rob has gripped the nation and perhaps it’s only The Archers that could tell this story in this slow-burn, incremental way.
“In the 1950s, the programme’s original editor observed that the success of the programme lay in the fact that they’d made The Archers addictive; it’s gratifying to feel that we’re still achieving the same compulsive, addictive effect in the competitive world of new media.”
