Today programme: BBC defends loss of 800,000 listeners amid criticism of gender pay gap and 'lightweight' stories

John Humphrys and the gender pay gap have been suggested as reasons why some listeners turned off, during a year in which editor Sarah Sands also faced criticism for 'focusing too much on fashion'

The BBC has been forced to defend its flagship current affairs radio show after the Today programme was revealed to have lost nearly a million listeners in the past year.

Figures from audience research body Rajar showed a drop of 800,000 listeners, from 7.66m a week during the second quarter of 2017 to 6.82 m a week in April-June this year.

The fall in ratings comes after a potentially bruising year for the Today programme, with veteran presenter John Humphrys in particular facing criticism for his interviewing style and the way he joked about the gender pay gap after being revealed as one of the BBC’s highest paid male stars.

There has also been criticism of new editor Sarah Sands, who is only the second woman to edit the programme in its 61-year history. She has been accused of making Today too “lightweight” by supposedly running too many “magazine-style” fashion features instead of political interviews and what is traditionally regarded as hard news.

A BBC spokeswoman, however, told The Independent that the newly released figures showed that the Today programme “still continued to be on an upward trend” of increasing audience numbers compared to the figures of about a decade ago.

She explained that the figure of 7.66m listeners a week between April and June 2017 was a record high for the Today programme, achieved against a backdrop of intense interest in the news, since it coincided with the General Election and Grenfell fire of June last year.

Sarah Sands is only the second woman to edit Today in the programme's 61-year history

That quarter also coincided with Sands taking over the editorship of Today in May 2017.

The Rajar figures released on Thursday represented the first time that Today’s weekly audience had dropped below 7m since January – March 2016 when it was attracting 6.76m listeners a week.

But the BBC spokeswoman explained that when audience figures climbed to 7.35m in the following quarter, April-June 2016, that at the time was a record, achieved at the start of a period of great demand for news sparked by the lead up to and aftermath of the EU referendum of June 23 2016.

The BBC spokeswoman said: “Audience figures fluctuate for news programmes across TV and radio in line with news events, and the latest Today figures show a sustained loyal listenership and an overall increase since 2014.”

Independent media analyst Alice Enders agreed with the need for caution when comparing Thursday’s figures against those achieved in the middle of huge interest in the news. She also said that the ratings drop had occurred at a time when other news programmes were facing falling audience numbers and fewer people were listening to any sort of radio.

She added, however, that the Today programme may have been particularly badly hit by the BBC gender pay-gap controversy.

Attention first focused on the Today programme in July 2017 when it was revealed that Humphrys, who also presents Mastermind, was on a £600,000-£650,000 salary while Sarah Montague, his female co-presenter at Today, was earning less than £150,000.

Then in January, amid the furore over BBC China editor Carrie Gracie resigning in protest over unequal pay (but continuing as a guest presenter on Today), Humphrys was overheard joking about the controversy with journalist Jon Sopel.

Humphrys subsequently said this had just been “silly banter between old mates.” He has also taken a significant pay cut along with other BBC men, amid attempts to lessen the impact of the gender pay gap dispute.

But Ms Enders, head of research at Enders Analysis, told The Independent: “The Today programme may have been particularly vulnerable to some of the fall-out from the BBC presenters’ gender disparity controversy.

“The audience may have been affected by some of the BBC presenter issues – the issue of the conversation [between Humphrys and Sopel].

“I can’t tell you why there has been that level of defection, except to say it is an eye-popping number, but it’s possible that people all of a sudden may associate someone like John Humphrys with being not exactly in the right mindset."

She added: “He made some ill-advised comments about the gender pay gap, which in my case would have been sufficient for me to turn off the programme forever.”

Humphrys, 74, who has been a Today presenter since 1987, has also faced a number of controversies over his interviewing style over the past year.

He was criticised for challenging Australian-born British tennis player Johanna Konta over her nationality when she has lived half her life in the UK, and for asking actor Rupert Everett about his sexuality and whether he regretted coming out as gay.

Some listeners accused him of “relentlessly grilling” Everett and being a "dinosaur" but a BBC spokesman said at the time: “Since this interview centred around Rupert Everett’s portrayal of, and long-standing interest in, Oscar Wilde, it was not inappropriate to draw parallels between the two men and their experiences of being gay at different points in history.”

Mr Humphrys has also long divided opinion as to whether his interviewing style is fearlessly dogged or excessively aggressive, to the extent that as far back as 2003 The Independent was asking whether he was “a national treasure or the rudest man in Britain”.

Over the past 12 months, however, the Today programme has also faced criticism from the opposite direction, with some commentators suggesting the arrival of editor Sarah Sands had led to the show “going soft”.

In September Roger Mosey, a former Today editor wrote in the New Statesman of a female journalist emailing him to complain: “I’ve had to turn the Today programme off for the second day in a row [after] listening to huge chunks of bilge from London Fashion Week on a day when North Korea fired another missile over Japan.”

Mosey said a Today “insider” had told him that some of those working on the programme had resented Sands’ apparent change of editing style and adopted the attitude: “FFS isn’t this meant to be a news programme?”

He quoted one BBC employee as being worried that Sands would “prefer Today to be the magazine rather than the news section”.

Sands, however, has reportedly defended items like the London Fashion Week reports by emailing colleagues that “It was ... great to have business playing its full part in the programme, understanding that fashion is as worthy of attention as financial services or media."

In a reference to former Chancellor George Osborne, who took over her old job as editor of the Evening Standard, she reportedly added: “The new editor of the Evening Standard apparently told the ES magazine editor that he was not interested in 'girls' stuff'. It's worth remembering the contribution that girls' stuff makes to the economy, and employment as well as to the gaiety of life."

When an interviewer asked Sands in October whether some of the criticism of her had been sexist, there was a long pause before she replied: “Interesting comment.”

She also rejected suggestion that the Fashion Week segments had crowded out proper coverage of the North Korean missile story by saying: “Today is three hours long and we had missiles at the top of every bulletin.”

While some have resented the prestigious 8.10am interview sometimes being given to cultural figures rather than politicians, others, including the columnist and former Today editor Rod Liddle have praised her for getting John Le Carré and Judi Dench on the programme.

Ms Enders also praised Sands for daring to give considerable coverage to topics such as fashion.

She said: “I can well imagine that the knives will be out, but the BBC cannot be preserved in aspic for crying out loud. It needs to be refreshed.

“It’s really important for the BBC to experiment in topics that are known to interest a wide variety of audiences. I consider that experimentation to be overdue.”