Zoe Ball has shed more than three quarters of a million listeners on her BBC Radio 2 Breakfast Show over the past three months, new research shows.
The drop of around 780,000 listeners between April and June of this year marks the programme’s lowest audience listening figure in nearly 10 years, according to the latest figures released by audience research body Rajar.
Zoe took over from previous host Chris Evans in January and until March, she maintained a steady listenership, with an average weekly audience of 9.05 million – almost unchanged from the 9.07 million for Chris’ final three months.
However, the number has now dropped to 8.27 million weekly listeners. The last time the audience was as low was in 2010, which was Chris’ first year as host.
Despite the decrease, Zoe – who made history when she became the first female breakfast show host in the station’s history – still has the most popular breakfast programme across the country.
However, her Radio 2 colleague Ken Bruce has leapfrogged her and now has the most listened-to radio programme in the UK, with an average weekly audience of 8.49 million for his mid-morning programme, according to the BBC.
Meanwhile, Chris – who left Radio 2 to host a new breakfast show on Virgin – has slightly grown his audience over the past three months, the latest research from Rajar shows.
He is up from 1.05 million weekly listeners to 1.11 million on the commercial network.
Radio 1’s breakfast programme, hosted by Greg James, has grown by nearly 150,000 listeners per week, in comparison to the first three months of 2019.
His programme, which airs Monday to Thursday, scored 5.19 million weekly listeners over the past three months.
According to the BBC, this is Greg’s highest number of listeners since he took over the breakfast slot from Nick Grimshaw last year.
Ben Cooper, controller BBC Radio 1, 1Xtra and Asian Network, said: “Record figures for Greg James’ Breakfast Show and fantastic results for Radio 1, as we continue to build our reach across all platforms and bring in new, younger audiences to the BBC.”