Zoe Ball leaves Radio 2 on the up but Vernon Kay is still bigger

The latest listening figures released today show Zoe Ball’s Radio 2 Breakfast show grew in the last quarter of 2024, but Veron Kay’s show is the biggest in the country.

BBC Radio 2 has more than 13.6 million listeners, and Vernon Kay’s mid-morning show is the biggest in the country, with a growing audience of 7.2 million according to industry body, RAJARs data for Q4 2024.

Zoe Ball’s Breakfast Show attracted 6.8 million listeners during her final months which was up 250,000 for the same period last year and nearly 550,000 from the previous three months.

Since taking over the show in 2019, Zoe didn’t manage to achieve the same numbers as previous hosts of the show, Chris Evans and Terry Wogan, but the radio landscape has changed since then.

Elsewhere, Heart is celebrating another new record with 13.3 million weekly listeners, with Jamie Theakston and Amanda Holden the UK’s largest commercial breakfast show with 4.2 million weekly listeners.

Capital Breakfast with Jordan North, Chris Stark and Siân Welby, which launched last April, has done well, reaching a huge 2.9 million listeners. The show has added 482,000 listeners in the last year.

Smooth now has its highest ever audience, with more than 7.8 million people listening each week, adding 1.7 million in the past year.

At Greatest Hits Radio, Rossie at Breakfast has grown to over 3m listeners for the first time, whilst Ken Bruce stays at around 4 million listeners.