Show Diary - 5 February 2026: Mums, social pressure and modern reality

[Jono]

Some very encouraging numbers for Radio 1 given the period of change at the start of the year.

https://www.musicweek.com/media/read/rajar-q2-analysis-bbc-radio-1-surges-back-above-8-million-listeners/090229

[R1Fan1]

A bit more from an embargoed email that Jamie Laing’s shared on Instagram, with the Going Home show reaching 3.3m.

 

Capital breakfast was also up to 2.8m, with a 261,000 increase the majority of whom are probably Jordan fans from Radio 1.

[onlyME]

Aled will feel vindicated by this. Although Jordan has a lot to be happy about too.

[AndyK77]

The Going Home figures demonstrate that some of us on this forum are no measure of the wider audience.

It baffles me that the show has gained listeners but proves I know nothing ? 

[Jono]

Impressive that somehow everybody has come out of it a winner. Greg's audience grew, Jordan's brought new fans, and Going Home is picking up younger audiences. An exciting time for radio - which seems to be a big winner.

[GrimsbyGal]

Could it be some fans of Roman have jumped to Radio 1?

[AndyK77]

3 minutes ago, GrimsbyGal said:

Could it be some fans of Roman have jumped to Radio 1?

Capital is definitely an older demographic so I'd be shocked if that was the case.  As said somewhere else, they have maybe come from Kiss.

[Jono]

What I find interesting is how open everyone seems to be about their listener figures this quarter. It uses to be closely guarded.

[onlyME]

A lot of talk about Vick, Jamie and Katie but it will reflect Jack moving to evenings too.

What went so wrong at Kiss for them to benefit from the changes?

[shippp]

Interesting that radio listenership is going up which is against what you hear with so much stuff social media, podcasts, Spotify, Netflix competing for people's attention span. And particularly the increase in young(ish) listeners with R1 and Capital both growing. Same with 1xtra and Asian network where they have both been decreasing for a little while before this 

[shippp]

I actually was part of the survey this time so it was interesting to see how RAJAR figures actually get collected. Also my slightly weird listening habits may have skewed it slightly lol. But I'm just one person out of many surveyed 

[shippp]

2 hours ago, onlyME said:

A lot of talk about Vick, Jamie and Katie but it will reflect Jack moving to evenings too.

What went so wrong at Kiss for them to benefit from the changes?

Yeah it's weird that. Not that I listen but  Jordan and Perrie and Tyler West are Stil on breakfast and drive and they have both seemed popular to Kiss' target audience for the last few years so it's weird its gone down so much. Marvin Humes is on mid mornings now  but I wonder if there are more subtle changes in playlist or imaging etc that have alienated the long standing listeners and made them want to listen to something else 

[callspy]

Despite what they say that's a bit of a low number for Capital Breakfast.  With all the press of Jordan leaving R1 for Capital, all the billboards across the UK and the availability of Capital and all the money they paid Jordan, to only grow the show by 0.25m is not great. That means over 95% of his audience is inherited from Roman.  The first two quarters are always difficult because people are interested in the new show.  The likelihood is there might be a drop in time. Going to be interesting to see how this goes.  Greg got an extra 0.1m and he was expected to drop because everyone was switching to Capital, That clearly did not happen.  

Radio 1 being up as a station is good news as well especially with the youth.  Heart it a totally different market but they like to say Heart is beating Radio 1 but it's the Heart brand that beats Radio 1.  You can't compare six stations to one. So I do wonder how Heart fm on it's own did for a fairer comparison? 

[Ash101]

3 minutes ago, callspy said:

Despite what they say that's a bit of a low number for Capital Breakfast.  With all the press of Jordan leaving R1 for Capital, all the billboards across the UK and the availability of Capital and all the money they paid Jordan, to only grow the show by 0.25m is not great. That means over 95% of his audience is inherited from Roman.  The first two quarters are always difficult because people are interested in the new show.  The likelihood is there might be a drop in time. Going to be interesting to see how this goes.  Greg got an extra 0.1m and he was expected to drop because everyone was switching to Capital, That clearly did not happen.  

I think we'll see a bigger growth for Capital Breakfast over the next 1-3 RAJARs.

It's all to do with the way some of the smaller Capital FM stations across England are measured with the RAJAR system, they end up averaging out the last 6 or 12 months worth of data because the area is so small.

See the RAJAR website here and for example Capital London is Q, Capital Liverpool/Birmingham/South is H & Capital Brighton/Mid Counties is Y.

Q = new data every quarter
H = the data is averaged over a 6 month period
Y = the data is averaged over a 12 month period

So a fair chunk of this data still includes January to March when Roman was on (and for the Y stations it included last July through to March).

[lochnessa]

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-13701917/Radio-1-host-Jamie-Laing-dig-Jordan-North.html

Silly article but that's the Mail for you.

[onlyME]

It seemed like Katie Thistleton felt the same way, she was making a big thing of Jordan's numbers while also celebrating Greg's numbers.

The way Aled and Jordan fell out at the end I wouldn't be surprised if Jamie had the nod to share it.

[R1 Insider]

It is worth noting Danny Beard increased listeners on a Saturday morning too. Most shows did.

[AndyK77]

38 minutes ago, onlyME said:

It seemed like Katie Thistleton felt the same way, she was making a big thing of Jordan's numbers while also celebrating Greg's numbers.

The way Aled and Jordan fell out at the end I wouldn't be surprised if Jamie had the nod to share it.

Very possible.  The language does feel a bit more personal than you normally expect in writing in a business email.  In my work world, what we'd say on a call and what we put in writing is quite different!

Katie is incredibly loyal to Jordan so I am sure she privately felt embarrassed by what Jamie had done and this was a very public way of doing something about it.  Vick also re-shared Katie's post highlighting that bit.

31 minutes ago, R1 Insider said:

It is worth noting Danny Beard increased listeners on a Saturday morning too. Most shows did.

Which for me is even more baffling than the Going Home situation as even though I can't stand Jamie Laing, I recognise some people do like him but I can't say the same of Danny Beard.

Which begs a bigger question - it feels like this goes beyond specific shows so what has brought people to Radio 1 as a station.

Are we aware of any (mainstream) shows that lost listeners?

[onlyME]

3 hours ago, AndyK77 said:

Very possible.  The language does feel a bit more personal than you normally expect in writing in a business email.  In my work world, what we'd say on a call and what we put in writing is quite different!

Jamie didn't even know what RAJAR was six months ago!