For a long time, we’ve held the assumption that the radio stations themselves were the communities. It’s become clear that the community is a show itself, and our loyalty lies with its host
Poor Ken Bruce. It’s been two and a half years since he left Radio 2 for Greatest Hits Radio and yet his scandalous departure is still cited as the tipping point of the BBC brain drain and the harbinger of the corporation’s demise altogether. It is, it seems, impossible for us to accept that a 71-year-old bloke who’d been doing the same job for 31 years might fancy a change, or – as is the case with his mid-morning show, which he pretty much transplanted wholesale onto the Bauer-owned station, PopMaster included – very little change at all. Just a lot more money.
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’t even really bitched about the playlists.
This week, in Saga magazine, he shared: “I’m always asked if I listen to Vernon Kay, who took over the old show on Radio 2 and I always say, ‘No’”. Shocker, given he happens to be on air at the same time. He continued: “It’s not because I’m boycotting the BBC – I still listen to Radio 3 and archive shows on 4 Extra – but because I’m part of a new family now, Bauer Radio.
“I 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’t hear me gloating or badmouthing the BBC, though. My new show’s doing well – apparently, the audience has doubled since I joined – and that’s all that matters.”
It’s hard to imagine Bruce saying anything more innocuous on the subject and yet the number of articles this week reporting that this constituted his “revealing the reason Radio 2’s audience numbers have fallen” are in the double digits. When it comes to BBC Radio, even his equivocation is gospel.
The simple, obvious reason, which he declined to actually state, is that he was poached in the hopes he’d bring a good chunk of his audience with him, and it’s worked. Greatest Hits – at least for now – was never going to usurp the heft of Radio 2 and Kay’s show, while declining, remains the station’s most listened-to programme. But, its audience has shrunk under Kay’s 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 – and it paid off.
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’s audience figures fall in line with the effects of those. Far more interesting than the battle on Kay’s hands is what our eternal fixation with Bruce tells us about what we really want from radio.
Now, a caveat: I’m about 30 years shy of Greatest Hits Radio’s target audience, but I listen to Bruce’s show reasonably often, because it’s 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 “one year out” and knowing when a caller will give a shout-out to “everyone else who knows me” and the songs are all bangers (it’s in the name).
It is not challenging, new, gimmicky or full of attention-grabs – it’s 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, “Where Legends Live On”). Kay’s Radio 2 show is high-energy, full of starry guests, there’s a PopMaster knock-off quiz Ten to the Top and while the playlist does feature lots of oldies, they’re slotted in around a lot of chart guff.
Still, it’s a slick show, and there are plenty of people who love Kay and prefer his self-effacing, fun-loving chat to Bruce’s comic grumpiness and firm, dry wit. But it’s still quite new. Radio is a habit, and people don’t much like when those change. So, it’s hardly a surprise he’d lose some listeners, because when you feel as if you’ve got to know a presenter, you’ll mourn when they retire – or you’ll follow them wherever they go. It’s not rocket science. Community is everything, and Bruce had 46 years on Radio 2 to build his.
For a very long time, we’ve held the assumption that the radio stations themselves were the communities – but as options become more diffuse and the BBC has lost its talent monopoly, it’s 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 – then I followed him to Virgin Radio and happily tolerated the Waitrose ads to do it, and now that’s ended the highlight of my week is his podcast with Maria McErlane, Wanging On, whose format is their long-popular agony aunt segment, and their caustic repartee. They built a community, and that community lives on.
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Radio 2 is trying to hold onto its communities – 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’s 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’s jump from Radio 1 to Radio 2 has not been without its hurdles).
Big changes in the last few years, like Bruce’s departure and the death of Steve Wright, mean there are a lot of new shows and a lot of new communities that, like Kay’s, 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’t hold their attention or speak to them directly, there are many other, more tailored options elsewhere.
So yes, Ken Bruce took a load of listeners with him when he left Radio 2. Vernon Kay’s big challenge is not winning them back, but growing a community of his own. Bruce had several decades to do it – with the state in which BBC radio finds itself, I fear those are decades Kay may not have.
