Chris Moyles signed off from his record-breaking eight-year stint on Radio 1's breakfast show with his smallest audience for six years, and was beaten in the ratings by Radio 4's news programme Today, according to new figures published by Rajar (Radio Joint Audience Research).

The daily current affairs series Today, whose hosts include John Humphrys, Sarah Montague and Evan Davies, drew an average weekly audience of 6.94 million, compared with 6.73 million for the Radio 1 show, between july and September, the final three-month period in which Moyles was in the job.

Having once boasted a listenership of almost 8 million, The Chris Moyles Show continued its recent downward trend, dropping a further 200,000 listeners compared with the previous quarter, to record its lowest audience since the start of 2006.

Moyles, 38, was replaced in the job mid-September by Nick Grimshaw, almost 11 years his junior, with Radio 1 controller Ben Cooper under pressure to attract a more youthful audience. Figures for Grimshaw's first full quarter in the job will be available in the New Year.

Meanwhile, audiences for the breakfast show and Today were reflected by overall trends for the two stations, with Radio 4's average weekly reach up 2.7% (to 10.85 million listeners) year on year, while Radio 1's figure dropped by 5.5% (to 11.19 million).