Who’d have thought that losing listeners would give BBC’s Radio 1 a reason to celebrate?

Some 500,000 people aged 30 and over have turned off the station recently but bosses say they’re more than happy – they didn’t want such old listeners anyway.

First up for a pat on the back is Radio 1 Breakfast Show host Nick Grimshaw.

Nick Grimshaw
Grimmy – scaring off 30-somethings (Dominic Lipinski/PA)

Ben Cooper, controller of Radio 1 & 1Xtra, said: “Since Radio 1 has been completely focused on younger audiences – and the most common age of a Radio 1 listener is 21 – it was highly likely some older listeners would move on, like the half a million over-30s that left us this quarter.

“I’m pleased that Grimmy is doing what I’ve asked of him by keeping his young audience happy and scaring off the over-30s.”

Nick Grimshaw
Now who’s the saviour of Radio 1, hey? (Mark Runnacles/PA)

The official figures come from audience research body Rajar which showed that the station pulled in an average weekly audience of 9.7 million listeners between January 5 and April 5.

This represents a fall on the numbers for the previous quarter, which stood at 10.4 million, while the yearly figure was 10.5 million.

Grimmy’s show recorded 5.5 million weekly listeners while over on Radio 2 the Chris Evans Breakfast Show attracted 9.5 million, down from 9.6 million last quarter and the record figure of 9.8 million last year.

Meanwhile, Radio 4 Extra has peaked with its biggest audience yet, making it the largest digital-only station in the UK. The sister station of Radio 4 saw an increase of a half a million listeners to increase their weekly reach to 2.2 million.

And over at Bauer Media, figures show that Magic Radio has shown year-on-year growth of 29%, with a reach of 3.6 million.