Why Ofcom was right to clip Radio 2's wings

Yahoo

10-04-2025

The BBC is many things to many people, but what it should never be, to anyone, is a bully boy. Therefore, the corporation should be counting its blessings that Ofcom, following a full Competitions Assessment, has provisionally concluded that the proposed extension to Radio 2 – a digital spinoff that would focus on music and archive content from the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s – cannot go ahead. Ofcom concluded that the station would 'create a significant adverse impact on fair and effective competition', something verboten as per the BBC Charter.
The rationale was obvious. While Radio 2 is easily still the most popular radio station in the UK, it's not as popular as it once was (losing roughly 2m listeners in the past five years), with commercial radio booming and independent stations popping up to serve audiences that, according to Ofcom, 'the BBC has moved away from'. The station's major commercial rivals - Greatest Hits, Magic, Heart - have strengthened their positions in recent years, poaching BBC DJs and listeners alike by serving up what we think of as more traditional Radio 2 fare. The audience that Radio 2 has moved away from is, inevitably, the older audience, and thus trying to claw those listeners back via the proposed spin-offs seemed a bit rich. The BBC can't have its cake and eat it.
One station in particular benefited from the change in Radio 2's intended audience – Boom Radio, founded in 2021 by Phil Riley and David Lloyd to cater for the 'golden oldies' audience that Radio 2 turned its back on. It's a tiny affair, with 1 per cent of Radio 2's budget, but the station has recruited cannily ('Diddy' David Hamilton, Simon Bates, David 'Kid' Jensen) and serves up exactly the sort of music that the Radio 2 extension was suggesting. The station proudly boasts that the average age of its regular presenters is 70 and that many of them host their shows from their sheds and bedrooms. Ofcom ruled that Boom Radio, which currently attracts just under 650k listeners, would suffer more than most from Radio 2's proposed land grab.
Riley, Boom Radio's CEO, was understandably cockahoop with the ruling, calling the proposed station 'typical BBC arrogance… Common sense has prevailed – David has beaten Goliath'. However, we should all be pleased. Firstly, because the BBC should not be allowed to thump smaller, innovative rivals into submission just because they can – Ofcom have allowed other BBC digital extension to go ahead, in the shape of Radio 1 Dance, Radio 1 Anthems and Radio 3 Unwind, because it sees 'limited impact' on fair and effective competition. And secondly, because this could be the spur for Radio 2 to get its own house in order.
Ken Bruce, whose defection to Greatest Hits in 2023 should have sent chills down BBC spines, last year advised his former employers to change course and stop chasing younger listeners. 'Radio 2 thinking it's cool is the worst thing we can do,' he said. Whether the station thinks it is cool or not is immaterial, but what is certain is that it has moved its focus onto Gen X listeners (people born in the late 1960s to the early 1980s), with much of its music now coming from 1980s, 1990s and later. (As I write this, Jeremy Vine has just played two big hits from the mid-1990s, Dreams by Gabrielle and Don't Speak by No Doubt.)
Radio 2 needs to take this opportunity to take stock and rediscover true cross-generational appeal (and also to consider a slightly more offbeat musical menu than used to be on offer via programmes such as Clare Teal's The Swing and Band Show). Older listeners are not a genre to be syphoned off into a digital station, while younger listeners still love to be introduced to music from long before their time. Now is the time for Radio 2 to remember the musical diversity that, in years past, has made it a hit.
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