Nick Grimshaw’s Radio 1 breakfast show averaged 5.5 million listeners a week in the first three months of 2015 – the programme’s lowest audience since Sara Cox’s last three months in the job in 2003. Photograph: Ian West/PA
Radio 1’s audience has dropped to its lowest level for more than a decade, with a record low for its breakfast presenter, Nick Grimshaw.
The station had an average of 9.7 million listeners a week in the first three months of this year, its lowest audience since the end of 2003, according to official Rajar listening figures published on Thursday.
Elsewhere, Radio 4’s digital sister station Radio 4 Extra, home to classic comedy and drama including Dad’s Army and Hancock’s Half Hour, overtook Radio 3 and leapfrogged Radio 6 Music to become the most popular digital-only station.
Digital radio hits nearly 40% of all listening
Grimshaw had 5.5 million listeners, his lowest audience since succeeding Chris Moyles three years ago. The last time the breakfast show had so few listeners was Sara Cox’s final three months in the job in 2003, before she was replaced by Moyles.
Grimshaw has led the station’s drive to attract younger listeners after criticism that it had grown too old. Next Monday will see another change, with Radio 1 chart show host Clara Amfo succeeding Fearne Cotton on the station’s morning show.
Radio 1 controller, Ben Cooper, congratulated Grimshaw for “scaring off the over-30s”, who accounted for around 90% of the dip in his listening figures.
Radio 1 lost 830,000 listeners year on year, down from 10.5 million in the same period in 2014. The BBC said more than half a million of those were aged over 30, outside of its target listenership of 16- to 29-year-olds, although the station’s average audience age is 32.
Its sister digital station 1Xtra was also down nearly a quarter, to 839,000 listeners a week.
Cooper said: “Since Radio 1 has been completely focused on younger audiences – and the most common age of a Radio 1 listener is 21 – it was highly likely some older listeners would move on, like the half a million over-30s that left us this quarter.
“I’m pleased that Grimmy is doing what I’ve asked of him by keeping his young audience happy and scaring off the over-30s.”
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