BBC 6 Music has overtaken Radio 4 Extra to become the
leading digital-only station, Rajar audience figures show.
The music
station now has 1.9 million listeners a week - up 31% on last year.
Chris Evans'
Radio 2 breakfast show added just under 1m listeners in a year, bringing its
total early morning audience to 9.5m.
Radio 1's Nick
Grimshaw, who replaced Chris Moyles in September, failed to reverse the
downward trend of listeners to the station's breakfast show.
Figures show
"Grimmy" pulled in 6.69m listeners in the three months up to 16
December - down from 6.73m in the previous quarter.
Radio 1
controller Ben Cooper said the figures "exceeded [his] expectation"
for a brand new breakfast show.
"This has
been the biggest schedule change in a generation, which has resulted in the
station's audience getting younger," he said.
Boost for Radio 2
Overall Radio 1
suffered a drop in listeners to 11.09m a week, compared with 11.19m in the
previous quarter and 11.66m in the last three months of 2011.
The Chris Evans
Breakfast Show helped Radio 2 boost its weekly audience to 15.1m. The station
added 1.2m listeners between October and December and 842,000 on the same
period in 2011 - a 5.9% increase.
Just over 7m
people tuned into Radio 4's breakfast programme, Today, representing a rise of
113,000 on the previous quarter.
But the
station's weekly audience fell to 10.75m, compared with 10.84m in the previous
quarter and 10.83m in the last three months of the previous year.
Meanwhile Radio
5 Live, the BBC's home of sport, added 26,000 to bring its weekly audience
figures to 6.12m - down on last year's 6.22m.
Digital radio
now accounts for a third of all listening. Figures are up 14% on last year,
helped by better access to DAB receivers.
All digital
stations have increased their weekly audiences year-on-year, though several
stations lost listeners in the last three months of 2012.
BBC Radio 4
Extra's weekly audience dropped from 1.69m to 1.68m, while Radio 1's sister
station 1Xtra showed a loss of 70,000 listeners over the quarter.
BBC Asian
Network also suffered a loss from 584,000 between July and September to 453,000
between October and December.
The largest
commercial digital station was Smash Hits with almost 1 million listeners,
while Smooth 70s performed well by reaching more than 700,000 listeners.
Ford Ennals,
CEO of Digital Radio UK, said he was "delighted" with the results.
"Digital
radio continues to transform the way people listen to the radio and one third
of all listening to digital platforms represents an important milestone,"
he said.
Local radio
Figures for BBC
local radio in England showed an increase of 209,000 listeners a week to 6.9m.
However, this was a reduction on last year's 7.3m.
David
Holdsworth, controller of English Regions, said: "It's good to see
listeners continue to value the journalism, debate and interaction with local
life offered by BBC Local Radio."
Heart is the
UK's most popular commercial station with 7.36m listeners - up 23,000 on the
previous quarter but down 1m on last year.
Among London
listeners, Capital FM's breakfast show - hosted by Dave Berry and Lisa Snowdon
- remains the most popular early morning programme on commercial radio with
1.08 listeners.
In the last
three months of 2012, however, it saw its weekly audience drop by 80,000 to
1.08m.
In the last
three months of 2011 the programme had 1.31m listeners.
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