Look, no one likes change.
In the five months since Ken Bruce sailed away from the BBC and into the port of Greatest Hits Radio, leaving Vernon Kay to take over at the helm of the most listened-to radio show in Europe, the former has very swiftly grown to daily audience figures of 3.7 million. The latter has lost 1.3 million.
It’s worth noting that seven million have stuck with Kay, who promised listeners “more of the same”. The BBC’s chief content officer Charlotte Moore said this morning, “Radio 2 continues to be the country’s most popular station, and I’m delighted with the flying start Vernon Kay has made to mid-mornings at the UK’s biggest radio show.” But 1.3 million – most of them, surely, that chunk of Bruce’s loyal fanbase who followed him onto commercial – is quite a loss.
Kay was always going to struggle – especially at the beginning. Bruce’s successor always had an impossible job. We really don’t like change, and certainly not at the BBC which, love it or loathe it, is an institution on a par with the NHS, and without which Great Britain wouldn’t quite be the same.
Bruce had been on his Radio 2 mid-morning slot for 30 years. An entire generation had grown up with him, while others had grown old with him. Winningly avuncular, he didn’t so much present his show as purr his way through it. Radio this easy to listen to must have been fiendishly difficult to produce on a daily basis, and the fact that it’s Bruce himself who is now doing “more of the same” over on GHR confirms what most of us, perhaps even Kay himself, knew already: no one does it better.
But then Kay is part of the new (okay, newish) guard at the BBC, alongside the likes of Scott Mills, Rylan and Owain Wyn Evans, presenters whose energy levels make Lucozade seem flat. If Bruce tended to coast along like a Rolls-Royce, lulling everyone gently towards lunchtime, then Kay is on the back of a Kawasaki in excess of the speed limit, speaking almost exclusively in italics and exclamation marks. If we reach lunchtime rather exhausted, it’s likely because no one can keep up with him.
Another issue, of course, is the show’s replacement for PopMaster, the daily quiz so beloved by its audience that it recently enjoyed promotion to television on Channel 4. Bruce, who had cannily copyrighted the format, took it with him to GHR where it remains appointment-listening. This required Kay’s producers to come up with an equivalent that didn’t infringe too much upon Bruce’s copyright but which nevertheless was as identical as it could be. The result was Ten to the Top, which, like PopMaster, requires of its contestants to answer questions about music correctly, but which, judging by social media, no one prefers.
Vernon Kay isn’t on air this week; it’s half term. Sitting in for him is Gary Davies, another BBC veteran who, in truth, would have been the more natural replacement for Ken Bruce. But the Beeb has to be future-thinking, and Davies – irrespective of his own bubbling enthusiasm and easy charm – is 65, and what’s future-thinking about that?
Kay, then, is here for the long haul – at least until he isn’t, that is. He’ll grow more assured in time, and may or may not snag some of those 1.3 million back. One thing’s for sure, though: Ken Bruce won’t make it easy for him. Proof? He’s about to be made an MBE for, amongst other things, services to radio.
Vernon, it’s a big mountain for slip-on shoes.