If Vernon Kay is Radio 2’s biggest hit we’re in trouble ...Middle East

There are only so many times I can tolerate a 50-year-old man shouting “Do you know what I mean?” at me before midday, so I am not one of the 6.73 million people tuning in to Vernon Kay’s Radio 2 show on weekday mornings.

Now two years in to filling the 10am slot that was home to Ken Bruce for 31 years, Kay’s loud “banter” and inane, excitable observations about everyday life and his weekends playing golf might be relatable and energetic enough to just about keep his programme the most popular in the UK. But for me they are another sign of the decline of Radio 2.

No radio station has been a greater victim of the mass BBC exodus than Radio 2. In the last few years, almost all of its top talent has fled to commercial rivals, given up altogether, or been misguidedly sacked in hopes of drawing in a new, younger generation of listeners.

Ken Bruce, Graham Norton, Claudia Winkleman, the late Steve Wright, Craig Charles, Simon Mayo, Vanessa Feltz – all gone, and many taking their fans with them. Replacing them like for like has been impossible, given meagre BBC budgets will not stretch to drawing in the best rising talent. And what appeal would a legacy radio station have anyway, with its generic music and strict, limiting guidelines, when young presenters and comics can earn more money and exposure from social media and brand deals, and grow their fanbases by being “authentic” and “unfiltered” and sharing their real opinions?

It is hard not to feel like Radio 2 is fighting a losing battle. Forget about radio’s industry-wide challenge of drawing listeners away from podcasts and streamers and TikTok – it’s hard enough for Radio 2 to hold on to the ones it’s got. So yet again, in ratings body Rajar’s listening figures for the first quarter of this year, its audience has dropped – this time by half a million, weekly.

I imagine the station was bracing itself for worse. Radio listeners are creatures of habit and take a while to accept change, and there was always going to be turbulence after the shake up to Radio 2’s daytime schedule this year, when Scott Mills took over from Zoe Ball on the breakfast show after six years, Trevor Nelson took over Mills’s slot in the afternoon, and DJ Spoony replaced Nelson in the evenings. Mills lost 360,000 listeners after Ball’s departure, which given the big names on competitor stations in that slot and the millions of listeners Ball herself lost after she replaced Chris Evans in 2019, is almost enough to warrant a sigh of relief.

But what worries me is what Kay’s popularity might signal to Radio 2 bosses about the future: that dumbing down works. His programme is not witty or playful or inventive. It’s got the Piano Room feature and a Popmaster rip-off quiz, but it’s worlds away from the wry, authoritative, smart stuff Bruce did first. It feels broad and like business as usual, hoping to reach the lowest common denominator by refusing to challenge them at all, and relying on the assumption that Kay’s name and perceived charm is enough to carry the show.

square BBC RADIO 2

Scott Mills is the only replacement for Zoe Ball - and that's a problem for the BBC

Appealing to the biggest possible demographic is the sole purpose of Radio 2. This isn’t a specialist music station, and it’s not a current affairs one either – it is there to give its listeners company, consistency, intimacy and routine. Its presenters are with us on the most mundane days of our lives and give us structure and familiarity and solace through the messy ones. They’re there as we wake up, drive to work, make dinner, they make us part of a conversation without us having to say a word.

But “mass appeal” should not be confused for “bland”, and Radio 2 is already playing it too safe. Radio is fighting against niche podcasts catering to the nerdiest and most niche special interests on Earth. It’s fighting algorithmically constructed playlists catering to everyone’s precise musical tastes. The only way radio can usurp that splintering and tribalism is by building its own tribe, with clever, cheeky conversation, inventiveness with the live format and presenters unafraid to be a little bit bold and offer up more of themselves. We want more weirdness, more silliness, more bite – not less.

Greg James does this brilliantly on his Radio 1 breakfast show. Rylan Clarke, Liza Tarbuck, Michelle Visage, and Romesh Ranganathan are triumphing on Radio 2 at the weekends, and are worlds away from the increasingly anaesthetising stuff broadcast Monday to Friday. Gambling on more of this is what will give Radio 2 a fighting chance.

Radio should simultaneously feel so personal it is like it speaks only to you, and connect you to a special group of friends who share the same jokes, and are part of the same tribe.

Radio 2 has always managed this because of its programmes’ spark, charisma, and trust in the audience’s intelligence. It will not keep its listeners if, in desperation to be all things to all people, it loses its identity and becomes a tribe we no longer belong to.

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