by Elliot Mitchell | Photos by WENN
BBC 6 Music hits 2 million weekly listeners, Radio 1 loses half a million
First digital-only station top
Tags: BBC Radio 6 Music
BBC Radio 6 Music has hit 2 million weekly listeners, becoming the first digital-only radio station to do so. It's not such good news for Radio 1, though.
The alternative music station 6 Music, which the BBC tried to axe in 2010, hit a new high in the third quarter of 2014, receiving 2.1 million listeners in the final three months of the year.
The station's listenership has tripled in the five years following its planned closure, with presenters including Lauren Laverne, Steve Lamacq, Mark Radcliffe and Stuart Maconie and others receiving consistently higher ratings.
Meanwhile, it has been revealed that other stations in the BBC network have been losing listeners, with Radio 1 down 500,000 listeners compared to the previous year in an attempt to attract an exclusively youthful listenership.
Reacting to the news, Bob Shennan, controller of BBC Radio 2 and BBC 6 Music said it “felt like a landmark moment” for the station, before detailing that they hope to attract 2.5 million listeners in the future. “It is not going to be a mass mainstream station like Radio 1 or Radio 2 but the vast majority of the adult population still don’t know about 6 Music,” he said.
“We will continue to look upwards to the next landmark, 2.5 million or something like that.”
6 Music will be presenting their own festival later this month, with The Maccabees, The War on Drugs, Interpol, Hot Chip and a host of other acts set to perform.