30-07-2025
Times Radio weekly audience up by almost a third
Times Radio is the fastest-growing talk station in the UK, figures show.
The station drew an average weekly audience of 616,000 listeners over the three months to June, up 29 per cent year-on-year, according to the latest set of Rajar statistics.
The station also had listeners for 4.9 million hours, up 15 per cent year-on-year.
Times Radio bosses said public interest in the Trump administration was behind the spike in listeners, as well as new recruits such as Jo Coburn, a former Politics Live presenter for BBC2, adding to previous arrivals from the broadcaster, including John Pienaar, Jane Garvey and Fi Glover.
Tim Levell, Times Radio's programme director, said in May that the station had started the year strongly with the launch of The Times at One, featuring a rotating cast of presenters including Coburn, Andrew Neil, Trevor Phillips, Daniel Finkelstein and Stephen Sackur.
Mid-morning shows from Hugo Rifkind and Rod Liddle also came in for praise. 'Both are very popular columnists who have brought real intelligence and an informed take on the world to those slots,' Levell said.
He said a growing focus on global affairs had underpinned the station's ability to capitalise on the 'compelling' news events of the past year, including the fallout from President Trump's 'liberation day' tariffs.
'Listeners are gripped by what is going on around the world,' he said. Times Radio's YouTube channel broke the 1 billion-view barrier earlier this year.
BBC Radio 2, meanwhile, has lost nearly half a million listeners since Scott Mills replaced Zoe Ball as the host of its flagship breakfast show. The breakfast show had an average audience of 6.22 million in the three months to June, the lowest figure since the Covid-19 pandemic.
Radio 2's weekly audience has now fallen by nearly two million in three years, down from an average of 14.53 million listeners in April-June 2022 to the latest figure of 12.62 million.
BBC Radio 3's breakfast programme has also lost a fifth of its listeners, after Tom McKinney replaced Petroc Trelawny in April.
The audience for Radio 4's Today programme is down from 5.7 million in the previous three months but up from 5.47 million year-on-year.
GB News's radio service averaged 547,000 listeners in the latest quarter, down 2 per cent on the previous three months but up 6 per cent year-on-year.
Talk, formerly Talk Radio, had an average of 487,000 listeners, up 0.4 per cent on the quarter but down 29 per cent on the year.
Year-on-year figures are regarded as more significant than quarterly ones, because of seasonal swings in listener figures.
Rajar introduced its current method of measuring listeners in the autumn of 2021 after a break during the pandemic.
