I don’t know that there has been a decline in listenership per se but advancing technology in this case the internet is making radio broadcast less economic. ‘Auntie’ did the same to us here in the USA.
Here’s the good news though: the BBC World Service can be heard 24 hours a day online at
http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/index.shtml . It helps to have broadband, but I regularly used to listen in my dial-up days without too many problems. The drop-outs were certainly less than listening to short-wave! BTW all of the domestic BBC radio channels are available through the BBC website.
