Zoe Ball’s Radio 2 Breakfast Show adds listeners in latest audience figures

Published on February 6, 2020 - 5:04 am

The Zoe Ball Breakfast Show on BBC Radio 2 added 335,000 listeners in the last quarter of last year, according to listening figures released today.

This should bring some relief to Radio 2 bosses as the latest audience figures for the Breakfast Show pull it back from what was the show’s lowest audience it had been since Q3 2010, when Chris Evans was fairly new in the job.

Radio industry body, RAJAR figures for Q4 2019 show Zoe’s programme attracted 8.2 million listeners a week, compared to 7.9 million in the previous quarter, although it hasn’t reached the 9.07 million listeners in the same period the previous year when Evans was still presenting the show.

Overall, the station has increased its audience slightly to 14.4 million, from 14.1 million last quarter, but it was almost 14.9 million last year.

It’s not such good news for Radio 1, its audience has fallen to 8.79 million listeners from 9.3 million last quarter and Greg James has seen a slight dip to 4.8 million listeners (Mon-Thu), compared to 5.05 million last quarter.

Coverage of the general election and Brexit helped 5 Live, Radio 4 and LBC each add half a million listeners. LBC’s Nick Ferrari at Breakfast reaches its highest ever audience with more than 1.5 million weekly listeners across the UK.

The Chris Evans Breakfast Show on Virgin Radio together with Virgin Radio Anthems and Virgin Radio Chilled is now the most listened-to digital only breakfast show, clocking up 1.2 million listeners.

Chris Evans says: “I am ecstatic in only a year we are No.1. Our plan is simple; give it all we’ve got and have the most fun along the way.”

The most popular digital-only station is now BBC 6 Music which grew by 8.4% to reach 2.487 million listeners.

Elsewhere, Heart Breakfast with Jamie Theakston and Amanda Holden remains the biggest commercial radio show and commercial breakfast show in the UK with 4.3 million listeners. Capital Breakfast with Roman Kemp is second to Heart’s Breakfast Show, reaching 3.4 million listeners.