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Sir Terry Wogan beats Chris Moyles to be crowned king of the breakfast radio
Ben Bailey6 Aug 2009
Sir Terry Wogan was re-confirmed as king of breakfast radio today, pulling clear of rival Chris Moyles in the latest official listening figures.
Moyles, the self-styled "saviour of Radio 1", was almost neck and neck with Wogan for listeners in the last set of quarterly figures.
But data released today showed 7.93 million people tuned in to Wake Up To Wogan on BBC Radio 2 each week, up from 7.77 million in the last quarter and well clear of the Chris Moyles show, which had 7.72 million listeners each week, up slightly from 7.20 million last quarter.
Figures from Radio Joint Audience Research (Rajar), the UK radio body, showed listener numbers overall to be at an all time high - 46.3 million people tuned in for at least five minutes in the course of a normal week, or 90.3% of the population.
Radio 3 was given fresh cause for celebration by today's figures - after being named station of the year at the Sony Radio Awards, the channel broke the two million listener mark.
A total of 2.02 million people tuned in each week during the last quarter, Radio 3's biggest audience for more than two years.
Audiences were boosted by Radio 3's showcasing of three of its four "composers of the year" - Handel, Haydn and Mendelssohn - and a poetry season which included a whole day celebrating Shakespeare's sonnets, read by Sir Ian McKellen.
Tim Davie, the director of BBC Audio and Music, said: "Radio 3 is a unique radio station with an unrivalled role in supporting music and the arts in the UK.
"I am delighted to see it follow its Sony Award with a strong performance that illustrates the public's enduring appetite for distinctive, high quality broadcasting."
The Rajar data also showed that Radio 4's reach broke 10 million after attracting around 465,000 new listeners in the past year, while Radio 1 added 660,000 listeners in the same period to take its audience to 11.34 million.
Radio 2 saw a slight fall in listeners from 13.46 million last quarter to 13.42 million, while Radio 5 Live and its digital sister station 5 Live Sports Extra had a combined weekly audience of 6.52 million.
In the commercial sector, Classic FM boosted its audience by more than 300,000 over the past three months to just over 5.7 million.
The station also reported a rise in the number of children tuning in - up 70% to 573,000 a week.
