Zoe turns nearly 1m listeners off Radio 2
ZOE Ball’s BBC Radio 2 breakfast show has lost nearly a million listeners since she replaced Chris Evans.
Figures released today show that in the first quarter of this year she had 8.11million weekly listeners, down from 9.05million in the same period last year when she started.
It comes as Radio 2 overall has lost nearly a million listeners over the past year, falling from 15.36million to 14.36million.
The station has come under fire in recent years for controversial schedule changes, with some objecting to Miss Ball replacing Evans at the start of 2019. Overall the BBC’s radio audience was down by 3.2 per cent on the previous year.
However, there is some good news for the broadcaster’s radio chiefs as Radio 6 Music reached record figures of 2.56million weekly listeners, with Lauren Laverne’s breakfast show getting its highest ever audience of 1.3million. And Radio 1’s breakfast show, presented by Greg James, had stable figures with 4.87million listeners. Meanwhile, more listeners have been tuning into LBC and Classic FM – with the latter receiving 5.5million weekly listeners, according to the latest listening figures from Rajar. The period measured for this year only includes the very start of the lockdown, so the figures will not capture the possible change in listening behaviours. James Purnell, director of BBC Radio and Education, said the broadcaster had received ‘record numbers of both live and ondemand plays in the first three months of the year’.