Ben Cooper, BBC Radio 1 controller, has defended the role of Radio 1 after last week’s RAJAR Q4 report showed its audience had dropped to 9.56 million, describing the figures as “only one part of the story”.

The Q4 2016 RAJAR figures found that Radio 1’s audience was down 3.2% for the quarter and 7.4% year-on-year. Yet, for Cooper, also controller of 1Xtra and the BBC Asian Network, the numbers fail to represent the station’s bigger picture approach across multiple ...