Topic: Wogan's listenership close to 8m

[Clive]

BBC Radio 2 breakfast host Sir Terry Wogan has added 300,000 new listeners to his show, building an audience close to 8m, latest figures have revealed.

Wogan's Radio 1 counterpart, Chris Moyles, added 160,000 listeners to his show in the last three months of 2005.

Radio 2 remains the most popular radio station, according to the Radio Joint Audience Search (Rajar).

Digital radio ownership has doubled in the past year, with the BBC having a 55% stake in the market.

Competitive

Radio listeners are choosing to tune into their favourite stations using a wider range of platforms of devices than ever before, including via digital TV and the internet.

The share of hours that listeners are tuning into digital radio has gone up to 11% of total listening time.

In the fiercely competitive breakfast slot, broadcasters Johnny Vaughan and Jamie Theakston both added listeners for their shows on London stations Capital and Heart FM, with respective audiences of 987,000 and 918,000.

 NATIONAL RADIO STATION AUDIENCES
BBC Radio 1 - 10.29m
BBC Radio 2 - 13.25m
BBC Radio 3 - 1.97m
BBC Radio 4 - 9.31m
BBC Radio Five Live - 5.72m
Virgin Radio - 2.52m
Classic FM - 5.91m
Talksport - 2.17m
Source: Rajar

Radio 4's breakfast current affairs show Today also fared well, raising its audience to more than 6.2m, while the station's arts programme Front Row reached a record 2.27m listenership.

No audience figures were produced for Radio 4's UK Theme in the early mornings, which is being controversially replaced with a news bulletin.

Radio 2's afternoon programme, hosted by Steve Wright, added 270,000 listeners during the last part of 2005, putting his audience at 6.5m.

The BBC remains just ahead of commercial radio in the UK, with a 67% share of all listeners compared with 63%.

Radio 2 is the most popular station, while commercial station Classic FM is ahead of Radio 3 and Five Live with a weekly reach of almost 6m listeners.

During the final quarter of 2004, Wogan surpassed the 8m mark for the first time, cementing his reputation as the UK's most popular radio broadcaster.

 
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/4673116.stm