The station has shed nearly 1 million listeners since Manchester lad ‘Grimmy’ took over from Chris Moyles. However, he’s still reaching an average of 5.8 million listeners across the UK every morning.
Moyles, who attracted an aging audience in their 30’s, was removed from the show to encourage a younger listeners to Radio 1, which is aimed at 15-29 year olds.
A spokesman for Radio 1 told The Guardian “When you put in a new schedule and target new listeners it takes time to build a new audience, both for Grimmy and the entire station.
“It is the biggest set of changes to the station in a generation. We were expecting this kind of situation. Even though the audience is slightly smaller our focus is on the younger demographic.”
According to recent RAJAR figures 15.3 million listeners regularly listen to BBC Radio 2 giving the station its biggest ever radio audience of 17.7%, partly due to the popularity of breakfast host Chris Evans.
Singer Robbie Williams caused a stir this week at the Sony Radio Academy Awards when he hit out at Radio 1’s playlist – and, perhaps unfairly, blamed Nick Grimshaw.
“I did the Brits and started singing, ‘Hey-ho, here we go’ to a bunch of industry people and they were all just like, ‘F**k off, you’re fat and you’re old. And Radio 1 don’t play you no more – you’re fat and you’re old’,” said Williams during his performance at the awards.
Williams turned to Grimshaw, who was in the audience and said “Isn’t that right Nick, you bastard?”
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