Chris Moyles breakfast show ratings sink to a five year low
The departing Radio 1 breakfast DJ has lost half a million listeners over the last year
In news likely to have put the man right off his breakfast, the ratings for outgoing Radio 1 DJ Chris Moyles’s early morning show have slumped to their lowest point in more than five years.
Newly-released figures from Rajar reveal that 6.93 million people chose to wake up with Moyles in the three months to the end of June - the smallest audience he’s recorded since the end of 2006.
Moyles, who is leaving the breakfast show in September, lost more than half a million listeners (6.85%) year on year, which may leave his 27-year-old replacement Nick Grimshaw facing an uphill struggle when he takes over the slot in the autumn.
Radio 1 as a whole recorded a 3.6% year on year decline in listeners, based on weekly reach, though its current audience of 11.27 million, is still up 1.2% on the previous quarter.
It remains the second most popular station in the country behind Radio 2, which recorded a weekly audience of 14.46m listeners, a figure down 0.7% on the last quarter but up 3.5% on last year.
Radio 2’s less abrasive breakfast DJ Chris Evans continues to boast considerably more listeners than Moyles with an audience of 8.95m, down from 9.23m compared with the previous three months but up from 8.67m in 2011’s second quarter.
Moyles’s highest ever recorded audience was 7.9m at the beginning of 2010.
