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  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.

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. 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”.