BBC radio stations post record listening figures for second quarter of 2013

BBC radio stations are this year reaching their biggest ever audiences, according to a listening figures monitor.

New data gathered by Radio Joint Research Limited (RAJAR)- a body partly owned by the BBC- has Radio 2 and 4 posting their highest audience figures since records began in 1999, despite Chris Evans’s flagship breakfast show suffering an average fall of around 50,000 listeners. It still pulls in a weekly audience of around 9.75 million.

The BBC Asian Network, which alongside 6 Music had previously been earmarked for closure, saw its weekly audience share rise from 554,000 to 587,000. 6 Music, meanwhile, was up 400,000 weekly listeners from the second quarter of 2012. 1Xtra, the hip hop and urban-centred digital station, welcomed 10,000 new weekly listeners this quarter.

Radio 1 saw a weekly average increase of around 700,000 listeners from the first quarter of 2013, but still trails the traditionally more sedate Radio 2 by over 4 million tuners-in. Nick Grimshaw, who replaced Chris Moyles on the Radio 1 Breakfast Show in a bid by the corporation to more effectively target the 15-24 age group, drew a weekly average of 5.9m listeners – an increase from the last quarter’s 5.8m, but still not enough to redress the vertiginous 1m drop in audience figures since Moyles’ departure.

The BBC’s in-house publication Ariel has a full breakdown of the RAJAR findings.

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