Tone-deaf BBC radio

SIR – Today, the most popular presenter on British radio will be let go by the BBC in its pointless quest for a non-existent weekday mid-morning youth audience. No one in the highly educated and well-remunerated BBC management appears to have realised that on any weekday morning the “youth” are at school, college or work and not being entertained by Ken Bruce. Yet Radio 2 is letting Mr Bruce go to a commercial station without a counter offer, although he is paid less than a quarter of the BBC football pundit Gary Lineker’s annual salary.

I, like many other of Mr Bruce’s loyal listeners, will follow him to commercial radio. However, the real tragedy of this is the contempt that BBC radio seems to have for its mature audience. Perhaps the removal of the taxpayer-funded licence fee would remind it that it is supposed to entertain its current audience, not an illusory youth market.

Chris Devine Farley, Wiltshire