Chris Evans’ radio listeners have increased seven-fold to over one million.
The 53-year-old radio presenter moved to host the breakfast show on Virgin Radio in January, with the station now averaging 1.301m weekly listeners. Originally, the station was seeing 447,000 tuning in a week but the huge increase means Evans has helped to boost the amount of listeners by a whopping 850,000. They also now have a 0.8% share of listeners, compared to just a 0.2% share in the previous quarter.
Wireless CEO Scott Taunton said: "This is an exceptional set of results for the new Chris Evans Breakfast Show with Sky. The breakfast slot has grown its audience to over one million listeners – seven times what it was in the last quarter – while Virgin Radio UK has trebled its overall audience year-on-year thanks to Chris and our friends at Sky. This is the first milestone in our ambition to become the UK’s leading commercial digital station and we are all delighted."
Elsewhere, Zoe Ball – Chris’ replacement on BBC Radio 2 – raked in an impressive 9.047 million listeners, down just 18,000 on Evans’ last quarter.
She said: "It was such a gift to be asked to follow Chris and Sir Terry Wogan as host of the Radio 2 Breakfast Show but also a great responsibility. My ace production team and I are supersized giddy to learn that over 9 million people are tuning in each week. Thanks to the listeners for giving us a chance and for getting so involved in the show’s antics. We can’t wait to embark on more adventures together."
Dave Berry topped the list when it came to commercial breakfast shows, with 2.2m listeners on Absolute Radio, up 6.2 per cent on the previous year, whilst Radio 1 Breakfast Show host Greg James added an extra 250,000 listeners compared to last year.
Chris Evans increases radio listeners
