Bye Radio 2, we’re off with Ken Bruce
The announcement that BBC Radio 2 presenter Ken Bruce is leaving is the straw that has broken the camel’s back for licence fee-paying fans like me. Over the past two years, Radio 2 has sacked or pushed out nearly all of its talent from Steve Wright to Vanessa Feltz and Paul O’Grady.
Tony Blackburn has been moved to a graveyard shift. Systematically and unceremoniously dumping long-standing presenters is covert ageism. Their mediocre replacements have dropped the hits of the 1960s and 1970s in favour of manic dance music.
It’s a dark day for the BBC while the owners of commercial broadcaster Greatest hits Radio, where Ken Bruce starts in April, must be rubbing their hands with glee because they know millions of listeners will follow him.
PETER OSBORNE, Sandbach, Cheshire. I AM sad Ken Bruce is leaving his morning show after 31 years.
It’s the death knell for BBC listeners of my generation. Radio 2 simply won’t play my sort of music any more.
The BBC has missed a big trick. Since 2007, I’ve campaigned for them to launch a Radio 2+ for silver surfers, but they just don’t want to know.
I switched to Boom Radio when it launched two years ago and am an avid listener. It plays the music I want to hear and its presenters are familiar names. It’s not just BBC radio that is losing the plot. Its style of TV doesn’t interest me either. I want old-fashioned light entertainment and great period dramas, not soaps, reality shows, cooking and harrowing crime series. DIANA DORRELL, Llandysul, Ceredigion. IT WAS inevitable that Ken Bruce would leave the BBC. No doubt he decided, like Sir Terry Wogan, to leave while he was still at the top of his game and not be sacrificed on the altar of the non-existent youth audience favoured by the BBC’s meddling managers. Will senior BBC management eventually have to walk the plank of humiliation and resignation for their wanton destruction of superb radio shows? I’m not holding my breath.
GRAHAM DAY, Stowmarket, Suffolk. I’M NOT surprised the great Ken Bruce is leaving Radio 2. The BBC has scored an own goal by axing many of its best presenters.
Before the youngsters decide Ken is far too old for the BBC, he has decided to move to Greatest hits Radio.
I will be following him together with my friends and relatives who are all of a certain age.
Ken’s decision to quit will leave the BBC floundering. After all, with 8.5million listeners a week, his show is the most popular on British radio. It wouldn’t surprise me if Radio 1 and 2 end up being merged. SUSAN PEAT, Beverley, E. Yorks.