Presenter’s weekly listenership falls to 8.27m but show still tops charts in breakfast slot

This article is more than 1 year old

This article is more than 1 year old

The number of people tuning in weekly to Zoe Ball’s BBC Radio 2 show has fallen by 780,000 since January

The presenter’s figures fell from 9.05 million to 8.27 million in the second quarter of 2019, although her breakfast show is still the most popular on radio according to the industry body Rajar.

Ball took the reins of the morning slot at the beginning of this year after Chris Evans left to join Virgin Radio.

Ken Bruce’s Radio 2 show, which airs immediately after Ball’s and has 8.49 million listeners, has taken over as the UK’s most popular radio programme.

“After 34 years as a part of the BBC Radio 2 family, I’m astounded that the allure of my daily grumpy musings, coupled with PopMaster, continue to entertain. Many thanks to the long-suffering listeners,” Bruce said.

Ball’s loss of listeners was not symptomatic of a general downturn in breakfast radio, however. The number of people tuning into Evans’s Virgin show jumped from 1.04 million to 1.11 million, while Greg James’s Radio 1 show attracted an audience of 5.19 million – the most since he took over the show last August.

Capital’s Roman Kemp also increased his breakfast show audience to 3.8 million in the first quarter in which his show was broadcast nationally. Regional Capital stations previously had their own breakfast shows, which attracted 3.73 million listeners collectively in the last quarter.

At LBC, Nick Ferrari’s breakfast show had 1.4 million listeners – his best ever figures – and the station as a whole attracted a record weekly audience of 2.4 million.

Alexa tempts radio listeners to leave BBC for commercial stations Read more

Eddie Mair, who switched from Radio 4 to LBC last year, has drawn in an extra 120,000 listeners to his late afternoon show since he joined the station in September.

Kisstory also reached a new record audience, with 2.32 million listeners in the last quarter. The “old skool anthems” station is now the most popular digital-only station in the UK, after 6 Music’s figures dropped to 2.28 million.

Kiss’s Tom Green and Daisy Maskell, Magic’s Ronan Keating and Harriet Scott, and 5 Live’s Nicky Campbell and Rachel Burden were among the other national breakfast shows to increase their audiences over the quarter.

The Hits Radio breakfast show, hosted by Fleur East, Greg Burns and James Barr, which relaunched in July, will not post its first listening figures until the next quarter.