BBC radio suffers
- Published: 25 October 2007 13:34
- Author: Yvette Mackenzie
- More by this Author
- Last Updated: 25 October 2007 13:45
The BBC suffered a disappointing Rajars with four of its five main national radio networks seeing their audience reach fall.
The BBC suffered a disappointing Rajars with four of its five main national radio networks witnessing a drop in audience reach on a quarter-on-quarter basis.
Only Radio 3 bucked the trend, seeing its weekly audience increase by 104,000 in the third quarter of this year. However, year-on-year Radio 3’s dropped to 1.938 million listeners 88,000 fewer than this time last year.
Radio 1 shed 295,000 listeners a week, and was down from 10.87 million in quarter two to 10.58 million in quarter three. The station’s breakfast show host Chris Moyles also saw his weekly audience drop from 7.25 million to 6.98 million quarter-on-quarter.
Although Radio 2 was still the most popular UK station with over 13 million listeners a week and although listening figures were up year on year by 274,000 they were down 104,000 compared with the last quarter. Terry Wogan, the station’s popular breakfast show host, saw listeners down from 7.92 million in the second quarter to 7.68 million this quarter, a loss of 240,000 listeners.
BBC Radio 4 was down year on year by 204,000 listeners and quarter on quarter by 220,000 listeners with a total weekly reach of 9.26 million listeners. The station’s leading current affairs Today programme dipped below the 6 million mark, down almost 300,000 listeners to 5.9 million this quarter.
Radio 5 Live was also down year on year by 258,000 listeners and 401,000 quarter on quarter with 5,489,000 for the period 16 June to 25 September. During this period TalkSport, 5 Live’s commercial rival, was stable at 2.3 million weekly listeners.
