300,000 stop listening to BBC’s Today programme

THE Today programme on Radio 4 has lost 300,000 listeners in a year. The BBC current affairs show drew an average weekly audience of 7.15million in the last three months of 2017, down from 7.45million the year before.

The slump coincides with a row over the wage gap between its male and female presenters. John Humphrys has taken voluntary cuts to his near £650,000 salary, which dwarfed that of his colleague, Sarah Montague, on less than £150,000 a year.

The show has also come under fire from Roger Mosey, a former Today editor. He claims that Sarah Sands, who took charge in 2017, has given too much airtime to magazine-style pieces instead of hard news.

The quarterly Rajar radio figures suggest some BBC listeners are switching to lighter stations. Chris Evans’ breakfast show pulled in an average weekly audience of 9.4million in the last quarter of 2017 – up 200,000 on 2016.

The BBC said Today had enjoyed record figures at the end of 2016 – making for an unfavourable comparison a year later – and that in the third quarter of 2017 it drew 7.1million.