Jonathan Ross loses 540,000 listeners from his Radio 2 show in a year

Listeners are deserting Jonathan Ross's Radio 2 show in droves following the Andrew Sachs phone scandal.

The controversial presenter has seen ratings for his Saturday morning show slump in the past three months.

The presenter's average weekly audience between March and June has been 2.85million.

That is 180,000 below the average of 3.03million for the first three months of this year, and 540,000 down on the 3.39million from the first quarter of 2008.

Ross's falling audience figures come at a time when radio listening as a whole has hit an all time high, with middle-class favourites Radio 3 and Radio 4 enjoying a boom.

Radio 4's listening figures were up almost 5 per cent to close to ten million on the same three-month period to June last year, while Radio 3 topped two million for the first time in three years.

Classic FM also saw a jump in its audience figures of more than 300,000 with around 5.7million listeners tuning in each week. Radio 3 controller Roger Wright said: 'People seem to have new thirst for classical music and serious programming.'

A BBC spokesman added that in the tough economic climate many people were turning to high quality radio programmes to relax.

Radio 2 breakfast show host Terry Wogan also saw his listening figures soar, and extended his lead over foul-mouthed breakfast rival Chris Moyles.

Wake Up To Wogan is still the nation's favourite morning radio programme and had an average weekly audience of 7.93million listeners in the second quarter of this year, against 7.72million for Moyles's Radio 1 breakfast show.

The 71-year-old's success could not stop Radio 2 slipping to its lowest share of the audience for nearly three years, although the station is still the most popular in the country with Chris Evans and Sarah Kennedy both adding listeners to their shows.

Ross's drop in figures will come as a blow to the star, who was suspended from the BBC for three months without pay following the Andrew Sachs scandal, as his ratings have steadily fallen.

It was last October that Ross and Russell Brand recorded a series of obscene calls to Sachs about the Fawlty Towers star's granddaughter which were later aired on Brand's Radio 2 show, triggering more than 45,000 complaints.

Published in the Daily Mail