No, Bruce will never escape the subject of the BBC, despite the fact that, unlike almost every other major broadcaster who has left for pastures new in the last few years, he has avoided big swipes about impartiality, pay, mismanagement, ageism and hasn\u2019t even really bitched about the playlists.<\/p>\n
This week, in Saga magazine, he shared: \u201cI\u2019m always asked if I listen to Vernon Kay<\/a>, who took over the old show on Radio 2 and I always say, \u2018No\u2019\u201d. Shocker, given he happens to be on air at the same time. He continued: \u201cIt\u2019s not because I\u2019m boycotting the BBC \u2013 I still listen to Radio 3 and archive shows on 4 Extra \u2013 but because I\u2019m part of a new family now, Bauer Radio.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cI want to know what our guys are up to, so I listen to our shows. Am I aware that audience figures for the Radio 2 show have fallen since I left? Yes. Did some follow me over to Greatest Hits Radio? Yes. You won\u2019t hear me gloating or badmouthing the BBC, though. My new show\u2019s doing well \u2013 apparently, the audience has doubled since I joined \u2013 and that\u2019s all that matters.\u201d<\/p>\n It\u2019s hard to imagine Bruce saying anything more innocuous on the subject and yet the number of articles this week reporting that this constituted his \u201crevealing the reason Radio 2\u2019s audience numbers have fallen\u201d are in the double digits. When it comes to BBC Radio, even his equivocation is gospel.<\/p>\n The simple, obvious reason, which he declined to actually state, is that he was poached in the hopes he\u2019d bring a good chunk of his audience with him, and it\u2019s worked. Greatest Hits \u2013 at least for now \u2013 was never going to usurp the heft of Radio 2 and Kay\u2019s show, while declining, remains the station\u2019s most listened-to programme. But, its audience has shrunk under Kay\u2019s stewardship, because Bruce gambled that lots of his listeners would be willing to suffer through adverts (there is a paid, ad-free version available) and follow him \u2013 and it paid off.<\/p>\n But BBC radio, broadly, is facing generational and demographic challenges, as well as the rise of commercial competitors and podcasts, and a worsening talent retention problem as purse strings tighten, and Kay\u2019s audience figures fall in line with the effects of those. Far more interesting than the battle on Kay\u2019s hands is what our eternal fixation with Bruce tells us about what we really want from radio.<\/p>\n Now, a caveat: I\u2019m about 30 years shy of Greatest Hits Radio\u2019s target audience, but I listen to Bruce\u2019s show reasonably often, because it\u2019s identical to the one he did on Radio 2 and that was part of my routine. I love his wry chat, I love PopMaster, I love all the in-jokes about \u201cone year out\u201d and knowing when a caller will give a shout-out to \u201ceveryone else who knows me\u201d and the songs are all bangers (it\u2019s in the name).<\/p>\n It is not challenging, new, gimmicky or full of attention-grabs \u2013 it\u2019s reliable, familiar and feels, to be honest, exactly like Radio 2 did about five years ago, right down to the trailers for Paul Gambaccini shows (there is a big banner on the website with the slogan, \u201cWhere Legends Live On\u201d). Kay\u2019s Radio 2 show is high-energy, full of starry guests, there\u2019s a PopMaster knock-off quiz Ten to the Top and while the playlist does feature lots of oldies, they\u2019re slotted in around a lot of chart guff.<\/p>\n Still, it\u2019s a slick show, and there are plenty of people who love Kay and prefer his self-effacing, fun-loving chat to Bruce\u2019s comic grumpiness and firm, dry wit. But it\u2019s still quite new. Radio is a habit, and people don\u2019t much like when those change. So, it\u2019s hardly a surprise he\u2019d lose some listeners, because when you feel as if you\u2019ve got to know a presenter, you\u2019ll mourn when they retire \u2013 or you\u2019ll follow them wherever they go. It\u2019s not rocket science. Community is everything, and Bruce had 46 years on Radio 2 to build his.<\/p>\n For a very long time, we\u2019ve held the assumption that the radio stations themselves were the communities \u2013 but as options become more diffuse and the BBC has lost its talent monopoly, it\u2019s become clear that the community is a show itself, and our loyalty lies with its host. I listened to Graham Norton for years on Radio 2 on Saturday mornings \u2013 then I followed him to Virgin Radio and happily tolerated the Waitrose ads to do it, and now that\u2019s ended the highlight of my week is his podcast with Maria McErlane<\/a>, Wanging On, whose format is their long-popular agony aunt segment, and their caustic repartee. They built a community, and that community lives on.<\/p>\n Radio 2 is trying to hold onto its communities \u2013 that is why amid all the other struggles it must contend with, it is critical that it retains trusted and beloved presenters like Sara Cox and Jo Whiley and Zoe Ball and Liza Tarbuck. But, loyalty takes a very long time to build, and unlike commercial stations or podcasts, the BBC\u2019s duty to its audiences means it cannot shamelessly transplant programmes or formats from other stations and expect them to be successful straight away (Scott Mills\u2019s jump from Radio 1 to Radio 2 has not been without its hurdles).<\/p>\n Big changes in the last few years, like Bruce\u2019s departure and the death of Steve Wright, mean there are a lot of new shows and a lot of new communities that, like Kay\u2019s, are only in the early stages. And, where decades ago they might have been allowed to grow organically, or people might have listened along passively out of habit because it was the only thing on and then found they had succumbed, now if a show doesn\u2019t hold their attention or speak to them directly, there are many other, more tailored options elsewhere.<\/p>\n So yes, Ken Bruce took a load of listeners with him when he left Radio 2. Vernon Kay\u2019s big challenge is not winning them back, but growing a community of his own. Bruce had several decades to do it \u2013 with the state in which BBC radio finds itself, I fear those are decades Kay may not have.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"For a long time, we\u2019ve held the assumption that the radio stations themselves were the communities. It\u2019s become…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":597786,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5311],"tags":[187814,187815,187816,49,978,659],"class_list":{"0":"post-597785","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-united-states","8":"tag-greatest-hits-radio","9":"tag-ken-bruce","10":"tag-radio-2","11":"tag-united-states","12":"tag-us","13":"tag-usa"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115623447643351492","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/597785","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=597785"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/597785\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/597786"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=597785"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=597785"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=597785"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Vernon](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/SEI_154672900.jpg\")
Vernon Kay took over from Ken Bruce in 2023 \u2013 his show remains the biggest in the UK (Photo: James Watkins\/BBC)<\/p>\n