Zoe Ball quit BBC Radio 2 with listeners at two year high before Scott Mills takeover

BBC Radio host Zoe Ball left her breakfast show at the end of last year and new figures reveal that the programme saw an increase in its audience shortly before her final broadcast

Presenter Zoe Ball left her BBC Radio 2 show with her largest audience for nearly two years, according to figures.

The radio host, 54, fronted her final breakfast show for the station back in December after six years in the role. She had announced her departure weeks prior after an extended absence over the summer, which came following the death of Zoe's late mother Julia Peckham in April last year.

It's now been announced that the flagship show saw an increase in its audience shortly before her final broadcast. An average of 6.8 million listeners tuned in to her show each week across the final quarter of last year, according to research body Rajar. This is up 9 percent on the previous three months and is the highest figure for the show since the start of 2023.

Zoe - who teased that she will still remain in the Radio 2 "family" - was absent from the airwaves for part of the summer of 2024. She returned briefly on on August 8 before coming back full-time from September 23.

Radio 2's Breakfast Show remains the most-listened to programme in the UK at that time of day, ahead of fellow BBC shows as well as commercial rivals like Chris Evans on Virgin Radio and Jamie Theakston and Amanda Holden on Heart. Radio 2's overall audience saw a similar jump to that enjoyed by Zoe, averaging 13.6 million across the three months to December, up 3 percent both on the previous quarter and year-on-year.

Scott Mills, 51, has since taken over as host from Zoe on the Breakfast Show, making his debut on January 27. The next set of Rajar figures, due to be published in May and covering the first three months of this year, will give an early indication of whether he has held on to her audience.

BBC Radio 2 head Helen Thomas said that she was "thrilled that Radio 2 remains the most popular radio station in the UK" and is "immensely proud" of the station's schedule. She added: "Zoe Ball continued to host the UK's most listened to breakfast show, and Vernon Kay celebrates fantastic figures which continue to grow."

Radio 4's audience slipped to 9.0 million in October-December 2024, down 7 percent on the previous three months but a fall of only 1% on the equivalent period in 2023. PA adds that Rajar's findings also show, for example, that Greg James' breakfast show on BBC Radio 1 is up 4 percent year-on-year from 3.9 million to 4.1 million; no comparable figures for the previous quarter are available, because of a change in the programme's transmission time.

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