Times Radio saw its weekly reach increase by almost a third in the past year according to the latest RAJAR listening figures for Q2 2025.
The record yearly growth means Times Radio has maintained its ranking above GB News Radio and Talk (formerly Talkradio) similarly to Q1 results, but marks a change from Q2 2024 when GB News briefly overtook Times Radio.
Times Radio had 616,000 weekly listeners on average in the quarter, a 29% jump on the same period last year.
The station pointed towards news coverage highlights such as the death of Pope Francis, President Donald Trump’s tariff wars, the local elections and the Runcorn by-election. It also credited its hosts including Andrew Neil who joined in May 2024.
Meanwhile Talk lost the most amount of listeners annually among the current affairs stations analysed by Press Gazette with a 29% year-on-year drop to 487,000 tuning in weekly.
This follows a 36% year-on-year decline for the station in Q1 2025 and was less than LBC News in London (545,000).
Scott Taunton, News UK president of broadcasting, said: “Our national brands including Talksport, the Virgin Radio network, Times Radio and Talk continue to innovate on and off platform – generating compelling audio and video propositions.
“Our brands truly resonate with their loyal audiences and, by driving a connected listening and viewing experience, we are building an incredibly rich picture of who they are and how we can better serve them.”
On a quarterly basis, BBC World Service saw the biggest drop at 17%, while BBC‘s highest reach ranking station Radio 2 saw a 4% decline in Q2 to 12.6 million, and remains behind Global-owned Heart (weekly reach of 13 million) which took first place overall in the RAJARs for the first time in Q1 2025.
Radio 4 maintained its grip on the second highest listener reach, with 9.2 million tuning in on a weekly basis. Both Radio 4 and Radio 5 Live saw growth of 2% year on year, with the former remaining the UK’s most listened to speech network.
Mohit Bakaya, director of speech and controller at BBC Radio 4, said the two stations “continue to deliver for audiences with increased listening figures year on year”.
“BBC Radio remains the number one UK radio brand and listeners continue to turn to us for trusted news and analysis, as well as the big sporting moments in the national calendar.”
BBC speech stations had benefitted from a “busy news” quarter that included coverage of House of Commons vote on the assisted dying bill, the Supreme Court gender ruling, and the ongoing trial of Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs, as well as major retailers being hit by cyberattacks, the broadcaster said.
LBC stayed steady both on a quarterly and an annual basis, with a weekly reach of 2.6 million people across the UK.
The biggest increases in total listening hours was for the national LBC News station, with growth of 8% to 3 million.
GB News Radio saw the biggest drop in listening hours at 30% to 3 million.
The station also fared poorly with its breakfast show, hosted by Eamonn Holmes and Ellie Costello between 6am and 9.30am. It saw the biggest quarterly decline among the stations analysed by Press Gazette, down 19.4% to 191,000 listeners.
However, it has maintained its slot above Talkradio, as achieved in Q1. Talkradio saw the second biggest quarter-on-quarter fall in breakfast show listenership at 4.3%, to 225,000 listeners.
LBC News shot up 77.3% in breakfast listeners for its London stream, now clocking in 195,000 listeners, and the main London broadcast was up 10% to 818,000 listeners.
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