Zoe Ball’s Radio 2 Breakfast Show draws lowest audience in 10 years

The Radio 2 Breakfast Show, presented by Zoe Ball, has hit its lowest listener numbers in a decade.

New figures released by audience research body RAJAR show that Ball’s programme lost almost one million listeners year-on-year.

In the third quarter of 2019, she drew 7.90 million weekly listeners compared to predecessor Chris Evans’ 8.82 million weekly listeners in the same period last year.

Despite this drop, her show is still the most popular breakfast show across the country.

Ball took over from Evans in January and initially maintained an average weekly audience of 9.05 million in the first quarter of the year, almost unchanged from the 9.07 million average audience Evans drew in during his final three months at Radio 2.

However her weekly listener figures then dropped to 8.27 million in the second quarter before falling to 7.90 in the third.

The new figures are the lowest for Radio 2’s Breakfast Show since the third quarter of 2009 when Sir Terry Wogan was host, with 7.76 million tuning in weekly.

Heart’s Breakfast show with Amanda Holden and Jamie Theakston, which launched on June 3, is already the most popular commercial radio breakfast show.

The first full quarter of audience figures show the double act drew in an average of 4.56 million weekly listeners.

Evans, who moved from Radio 2 to Virgin in January, has retained a stable audience of 1.11 million over the last three months, matching his second quarter ratings.

At BBC Radio 1, Greg James has seen a year-on-year increase in listeners for the Breakfast Show, which he hosts Mondays to Thursdays.

The programme had a weekly average audience of 5.05 million listeners in the third quarter of this year, compared to 4.98 million in the same period last year.

Ben Cooper, who recently announced his departure as controller for BBC Radio 1, 1Xtra and Asian Network, said the broadcaster was “so proud that Greg James’s Breakfast Show continues to successfully attract audiences.”

With additional reporting by Press Association.

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