Grim News from Rajars

The Rajars are out again, with Radio 1’s Nick Grimshaw (pictured) experiencing a dramatic audience drop of half a million in the first quarter of 2014 and Chris Evans maintaining his reign with a breakfast of champions on Radio Two. The figures reveal that Grimmy’s listeners fell by 7% in the first quarter of the year, with the breakfast show dropping by 510,000 listeners to 5.78m.

Radio One’s overall listeners dropped to 10.5m, down 440,000 on the previous quarter but up year-on-year.

However, the host is continuing the trend of being the pied piper of the much sought after 16-24 year old listeners that Radio One has become obsessed with, increasing his younger audience to the tune of 130,000.

Since taking over from Moyles in 2012, Grimshaw has lost a total of 1.1 million listeners aged 25 and older, and gained 230,000 under-24s, finding himself in the unique position of being praised by his superiors for shedding listeners.

Radio 1 Controller, Ben Cooper said: “I was asked to build a younger audience for Radio 1 and regenerate the brand, and these figures show we’re doing exactly that. Grimmy and the breakfast show continue to gain young listeners … which is the challenge I set him”.

Elsewhere, Chris Evans’ audience increased slightly from 9.82m in the last quarter of 2013 to 9.83m in this period- contributing to an overall Rajar record for Radio Two with 15.7m listeners. The station was named UK station of the year at the Radio Academy Awards earlier in the week.

Switching to the BBC’s digital only stations, 6 Music received a boost of 6.3% to 1.6m listeners whilst 1Xtra revealed a year-on-year jump of 10% to 1.1m. Those tuning in to the Asian network dropped by more than 13% across the year, to 478,000. To find out more about the latest Rajar figures, go to their website.