Evans radio audience holds steady

Chris Evans broadcasts three hours each morning between Monday and Friday

Chris Evans’s breakfast show is still the nation’s favourite morning listen, according to new figures from Rajar.

The BBC Radio 2 presenter drew a weekly audience of 8.8 million in the last three months of 2011 – the same it reached over the previous quarter.

BBC Radio 4′s Today programme saw its audience rise over the same period, from 6.7 million to 7.1 million.

Chris Moyles’s Radio 1 show saw a more modest improvement during the quarter, going from 7.1 million to 7.2 million.

Overall, both Radio 1 and Radio 2 saw a decline in their audiences.

The former saw its listenership drop from 11.8 million to 11.6 million, while the latter went from 14.3 million to 14.2 million.

Radio 3′s audience saw a modest rise from 2.05 million to 2.09 million, while Radio 4 increased from 10.5 million to 10.8 million.

Radio 5 live lost listeners with its weekly reach falling from 6.23 million to 6.22 million.

In the digital arena, BBC stations 6 Music and 1Xtra both recorded their highest ever audiences.

6 Music – spared the axe in 2010 – saw its audience swell to 1.4 million, while 1Xtra saw 1 million people tuning in for the first time.

Commercial station Capital Radio kept the top spot in London with a weekly reach of 2.2 million that put it just ahead of Magic 105.4.

Meanwhile talkSPORT – which was named station of the year at the Sony Radio Academy awards last year, recorded its highest-ever audience for the quarter since its launch as Talk Radio in 1995.

It saw an increase to 3.2 million listeners following its coverage of the 2011 Rugby World Cup.

According to Rajar, 89% of the UK population – 46.7 million adults – tuned into their favourite radio station each week in the last three months of 2011.

That was 50,000 fewer when compared to the same period in 2010, but 709,000 more than two years ago.