Chris Moyles 'dismisses RAJAR figures'

BBC Radio 1's Chris Moyles has claimed that the ratings gap between his breakfast show and Radio 2's Chris Evans is because official listening figures do not include under-15s.

According to RAJAR figures for the first quarter of 2010, Evans has increased the Radio 2 breakfast show's weekly reach to 9.53m since taking over from Sir Terry Wogan.

In comparison, Moyles's morning audience on Radio 1 trails significantly behind on 7.88m, despite increasing from 7.24m in the previous quarter.

During his show yesterday, Moyles said that the audience figures do not give a true picture because RAJAR does not take into account under-15 listeners in its calculations.

According to the Daily Mirror, he said: "There aren't many 13 and 14-year-olds listening to Radio 2, so their figure's fairly accurate.

"We're on 7.88m, but if you add on the 14, 13 and 12-year-olds, do you know what that figure is? It's nine million, over a million more. That is cos we're wicked and bad."

Radio 1 also agreed with Moyles's claim that his weekly audience would actually be around 9.1m if under-15s were taken into consideration.