Zoe Ball bowed out of her BBC Radio 2 Breakfast Show with her largest audience for nearly two years, figures reveal.
The radio DJ, 54, who presented the breakfast show since 2019, brought her hosting of the flagship BBC programme to an end on December 20 with an emotional farewell to listeners.
An average of 6.8 million listeners tuned in to her programme each week across the final quarter of last year, according to research body Rajar.
This is up 9% on the previous three months and is the highest figure for the show since the start of 2023.
Ball was absent from the airwaves for part of the summer of 2024, returning briefly on August 8 before coming back full-time from September 23.
Radio 2’s Breakfast Show remains the most-listened to programme in the UK at that time of day, ahead of fellow BBC shows as well as commercial rivals such as Chris Evans on Virgin Radio and Jamie Theakston and Amanda Holden on Heart.
The next set of Rajar figures, due to be published in May and covering the first three months of this year, will give an early indication of whether Ball’s replacement Scott Mills has held on to her audience.
Mills took over the breakfast show on January 27.
Radio 2’s overall audience saw a similar jump to that enjoyed by Ball, averaging 13.6 million across the three months to December, up 3% both on the previous quarter and year-on-year.
BBC Radio 2 head Helen Thomas said she was “thrilled that Radio 2 remains the most popular radio station in the UK”, and is “immensely proud” of the station’s schedule.
She added: “Zoe Ball continued to host the UK’s most listened to breakfast show, and Vernon Kay celebrates fantastic figures which continue to grow.”
Radio 4’s audience slipped to 9.0 million in October-December 2024, down 7% on the previous three months but a fall of only 1% on the equivalent period in 2023.
Changes in Radio 5 Live’s audience often reflect the impact of high-profile sporting events and this is true of its latest figures, which show a drop from a post-pandemic high of 6.0 million in the third quarter of last year – a period that included the Olympics and the conclusion of Euros – to 5.3 million in the final quarter.
Rajar’s findings also show that:
– Radio 4’s Today programme had an average of 5.7 million listeners in the final three months of 2024, down 2% on the previous quarter but up 2% year-on-year.
– The audience for Radio 3’s breakfast programme is up 18% year-on-year from 698,000 to 827,000, though this is down 5% on the previous quarter.
– Greg James’ breakfast show on Radio 1 is up 4% year-on-year from 3.9 million to 4.1 million; no comparable figures for the previous quarter are available, because of a change in the programme’s transmission time.
Greatest Hits Radio has seen a slight fall in listeners for the third quarter in a row, though its average audience of just under 7.4 million is still higher than 12 months ago, when it stood at 6.8 million.
The station has more than doubled the size of its audience in recent years, surging from 3.0 million at the end of 2021 to nearly 7.7 million in early 2024, driven by big-name signings such as Ken Bruce and Simon Mayo.
Its rapid growth looks to have come to a halt, however.
Among the smaller news-based stations, Times Radio enjoyed its best numbers since launching in 2020, with an average audience of 604,000 listeners across the three months to December, up 8% on the previous quarter and a jump of 23% on the year.
GB News averaged 468,000 listeners in the latest quarter, down 23% on the previous three months but 9% up year-on-year, while Talk – formerly Talk Radio – had an average of 504,000 listeners, down 13% on the quarter and down 30% on the year.
