The Archers has lost nearly 200,000 listeners - with the drop blamed on recent controversial storylines.

Some fans of the Radio 4 soap have been upset with much-loved Ruth Archer's affair with herdsman Sam, while others complained when farmer Adam Macy and chef Ian Craig married in the show's first civil partnership.

Now industry figures published by Rajar for the last three months of 2006, when both the storylines came to a boil, show a weekly audience down 197,000 compared to last year.

One complainant about the afair, which peaked on November 7 when the pair secretly met at an Oxford hotel, wrote on the BBC website: "I thought The Archers was supposed to be a radio series on an agricultural theme, not an audio version of a Jackie Collins novel."

Elsewhere, Radio 4's Desert Island Discs, recently taken over by Kirsty Young, dropped to 2.54 million from 2.69 million in 2005, when Sue Lawley was presenting.

Radio 2, with an audience at 13.27 million, up 530,000 in three months, is still the UK's most popular station, while Radio 1's 10.26 million total was down 320,000 on the previous quarter.

The BBC attributed the drops to seasonal variation and normal fluctuations.