Sir Terry goes out on a high

Sir Terry Wogan has departed Radio 2 breakfast with a set of figures to be proud of, pulling in 8.1m listeners to match his previous record on the show.

Listeners to the final Wake Up To Wogan will be re-united with the presenter on Radio 2 on Valentines day, as he starts his new two hour show from the Radio Theatre.

Tim Davie, Director of BBC Audio and Music, said “Terry is a legendary broadcaster and these figures show his popularity has never been higher. I’m now looking forward to tuning into his new show later this month.” 

Sir Terry’s performance at breakfast helped to boost Radio 2’s weekly share to 16.5 percent, matching the network’s record high, despite a slight decline on reach from 13.62m to 13.46m.

Over at Radio 1, the stations reach and share dipped a little, to 10.76m weekly listeners and a new share of 9.9 per cent, however the reach is an improvement on last year’s figures. The Chris Moyles Breakfast show has enjoyed a lift in reach with 7.24m listeners now tuning in each week.

Radio 3 has lost 320,000 listeners in the last quarter, giving the station a new weekly reach of 1.87m and taking their share down to 1.1 percent.

Radio 4’s previous quarter seen them hit a record reach of 10.21m, it’s now back down to 9.84m but the share has climbed a little to match the network’s joint highest figure of 12.5percent.

BBC Radio 5 Live and Sports Extra now have a combined weekly audience of 6.19m, with Sports Extra contributing 663,000 of that figure. The reach is better than that of one year ago but lower than last years numbers. Share has also taken a tumble to 4.6percent.

The BBC’s digital services have also performed well, with BBC 6 Music growing their audience to 695,000, beating figures for the previous quarter and year. BBC Radio 7 is now posting an increased audience of 931,000 while BBC Asian Network and 1Xtra staying steady with audiences of 360,000 and 531,000 respectively.

BBC World Service now has a reach of 1.23m.