The BBC Radio 2 breakfast show lost more than 360,000 listeners following Zoe Ball’s exit, new audience figures show.
The presenter hosted her final breakfast programme in December after six years in the slot, and recently took up a new role fronting Saturday afternoons on the station.
After her departure, DJ Mark Goodier covered the show for most of January, until new host Scott Mills took over at the end of that month.
Radio 2 still comfortably has the most popular breakfast show in the UK, attracting an audience of 6.45 million between January and March, a 5% drop on the previous quarter, according to industry ratings body Rajar.
Ball had added more than 200,000 listeners during her final three months on the programme.
After taking over the breakfast show, Mills was replaced on his former afternoon slot by Trevor Nelson, whose evening programme was taken over by DJ Spoony.
Vernon Kay attracted an audience of 6.73 million in the first three months of 2025, meaning his mid-morning show retained its crown as the most popular radio programme in the UK.
The show is down, however, on the audience of 8.2 million achieved by his predecessor Ken Bruce, who left in 2023.
The station’s weekly audience fell by about half a million compared with its previous total of 13.65 million in the final quarter of 2024, Rajar said.
Radio 2 chief Helen Thomas said: “In a quarter which saw Radio 2 launch a new daytime schedule in late January, host some of the world’s most loved musicians in the Piano Room throughout February, and celebrate country music in March, I’m thrilled that Radio 2 remains the UK’s most popular radio station with 13.11m listeners each week.”
Listening figures often drop after major schedule changes, and Ball herself lost nearly 800,000 listeners in 2019 after Chris Evans’ departure.
The breakfast show regularly attracted more than nine million listeners during Evans’ tenure. That figure has not been matched since, although radio audiences have become increasingly fragmented in recent years.
The BBC, and Radio 2 in particular, went through a tumultuous period around 2022, which saw several high-profile figures leave the station, either by choice or through schedule shake-ups.
Elsewhere, Heart’s breakfast show, hosted by Jamie Theakston and Amanda Holden, has seen its audience rise by 250,000 listeners.
It attracted a record audience of 4.3 million in the first quarter of the year, cementing its status as the most popular commercial breakfast show in the UK.
Meanwhile, Gok Wan’s first three months co-hosting Magic Radio’s breakfast show, alongside Harriet Scott, saw the programme marginally increase its audience to 862,000.
However, it is still significantly down on the 1.2 million listeners it had a year ago, when it was fronted by former Boyzone singer Ronan Keating.
Capital’s breakfast show, hosted by Jordan North, was down by 140,000 listeners after a leap in listeners following his arrival last year.
And after a loss of more than a quarter of a million in 2024, Kiss Breakfast, hosted by Jordan Banjo and Perri Kiely, climbed by 80,000 in the latest quarter.