Radio Ratings Reveal Morning Shows are King

Following Monday's Sony Radio Academy Awards, radio ratings for the first quarter of the year were released, proving that morning shows or breakfast programmes are among the most listened to.

Talksport, which added almost 900,000 listeners to its station and now has 3.25 million listeners a week, was named station of the year. It is the first commercial operation to win the award.

BBC Radio 5 Live's breakfast programme won the prize for breakfast programme of the year. Hosted by Nicky Campbell, it contributed 2.74 million listeners to the station's 6.65 million listeners. The station's overall ratings went down by 6.2% compared to the previous quarter, but is up by 2.7% year on year. In fact, the BBC's lead over commercial radio is also down, now only having 55% of the market while its commercial rivals have 42.6%

It's not all bad news, however. Ratings for BBC Radio 4 show that from January to March, the station had an average weekly audience of 10.83 million. The station's Today programme, hosted by Evan Davis and John Humphrys, got a record 7 million listeners, aboyt 600,000 more in comparison to last year. Radio 3, on the other hand, has also been enjoying a large audience of 2.26 million, the biggest it's had in seven years. Radio 1, 1Xtra, and 6 Music also reached record figures.

However, BBC Radio 2 DJ Chris Evans still has the most amount of listeners for his morning show. Breaking the 9 million barrier for a second time, he brought in 9.2 million listeners in the first three months of 2011. This figure, which is up from the previous quarter, but down from the 9.74 million he was enjoying a year ago, is still significantly more that Radio 1's Chris Moyles. Moyles' morning show has 7.52 million listeners, also down from 7.88 million he enjoyed in the first three months of 2010

Total figures show that commercial radio enjoys an audience of 34 million listeners a week.