Greatest Hits DJ Ken Bruce 'steals' more listeners from BBC Radio 2
Greatest Hits Radio has grown its audience by "70 per cent" over the last year.
Veteran presenter Ken Bruce is continuing to draw listeners from Radio 2, eleven months after his departure from the station for a rival company.
The legendary broadcaster, who now presents on Greatest Hits Radio from Monday to Friday 10am-1pm, now has 3.8 million listeners tuning in each week, according to official data. He started at the station with 2.2 million listeners last April.
Bruce spent over three decades presenting BBC Radio 2, where his long-running PopMaster music radio quiz drew in a large audience, but made the decision to leave for the rival station back in February 2023. He took his PopMaster quiz, to which he owns the rights, with him to his new home.
Charlotte Moore, BBC chief content officer, said: “I’m pleased that BBC Sounds continues to grow as audiences discover on-demand programming from us whenever they want to, and are able to choose from a wide range of high-quality BBC podcasts and music content to suit their moods.”
Meanwhile, Bruce’s former slot, now hosted by Vernon Kay, has lost 1.5 million listeners from the time slot since the broadcaster’s departure, according to analysis by radio consultancy Hallett Arendt, with just 6.8 million tuning in weekly over the past three weeks compared to 8.2 million in the same period last year.
However, the drop in listeners at BBC Radio 2 appears to be levelling off.
The station had an average weekly audience of 13.3 million people in October to December 2023, down 7% from 14.3 million in 2022, but a fall of just 1% in the previous three months, according to Rajar figures.
Greatest Hits Radio has seen a large jump in its audience over the last year, up 70 per cent from 4 million to 6.8 million.
Former Radio 2 presenter, host of the Greatest Hits Radio drive-time show, said he was “delighted” at the station’s success.
“We’re hearing from more and more listeners who continue to find us on Greatest Hits Radio for Confessions, All-Request Friday and all the other fun stuff. What a very pleasant start to 2024,” he said.
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The 72-year-old finished two weeks before the end of his contract last March and later revealed that he disliked some of the music he was forced to play, admitting he had started to feel “bitter and entrenched”.
Speaking to Gyles Brandreth for his podcast series Rosebud, the broadcaster said: “There was a point of saying that I can’t enthuse over all the new music I’m having to play as much as I could over the old music.
"And I didn’t want to get to the stage where I was badmouthing some of the music [or] pretending to like it. I certainly did think I’ve got a bit more to offer."
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He continued: "I didn’t want to be declining over the next three or four years and still doing the same show, but everybody around me getting younger and thinking, 'Am I the old bloke in the corner here?'
"I was the youngster on the station and then almost overnight I became the veteran, and I didn’t want to become the old grump in the corner saying “things aren’t what they used to be”, or [to] any new idea say, 'No, we tried that, didn’t work', which does happen.
"I just felt I would get more bitter and entrenched."
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Authors
Molly Moss is a Trends Writer for Radio Times, covering the latest trends across TV, film and more. She has an MA in Newspaper Journalism and has previously written for publications including The Guardian, The Times and The Sun Online.
