Rajar Q4 2022 Breakfast: Heart and Capital bounce back

Global’s Heart Breakfast with Jamie Theakston & Amanda Holden and Capital Breakfast with Roman Kemp both bounced back after suffering double-digit audience declines last quarter.

The former added over 300,000 average weekly listeners in Q4 (+8.2 percentage points quarter-on-quarter) to reach 3.9 million and the latter added 170,000 average weekly listeners (+6.8 percentage points quarter-on-quarter) to 2.7 million.

The figures make Heart Breakfast the biggest commercial breakfast show and the biggest commercial radio show in the UK.

All major BBC Radio breakfast shows dropped in year-on-year listenership, according to the latest figures from Rajar.

Though BBC 2’s The Zoe Ball Breakfast Show remained the leading breakfast show in the UK, it saw a quarter-on-quarter decline in listenership of 3.1 percentage points (-4.8 year-on-year) to 7.1 million average weekly listeners. BBC Radio 1 (-4.5 points), BBC Radio 3 (-13.9), BBC Radio 4 (-4.4), and BBC Radio 5 (-12) all saw their breakfast shows decline year-on-year.

A beneficiary of the BBC’s loss of breakfast market share has been Bauer, which saw year-on-year audiences grow by 19.5 percentage points on Simon Ross-hosted Greatest Hits Radio (+3.4 points quarter-on-quarter) to 1.7 million average weekly listeners. The smaller Hits Radio Breakfast Show also increased audiences by 13.2 percentage points in Q4 and 28.5 points year-on-year to grow to 455,000 listeners.

In London, LBC’s Nick Ferrari at Breakfast, which reaches 1.3 million average weekly listeners, was the number-one commercial breakfast show for reach, hours and share.