Greatest Hits Radio makes no secret of the fact that a central pillar of its identity is in plundering BBC Radio 2 of its presenters – and its listeners.
Perhaps, years ago, there was a little bit of cursory evasion, about it being a place for a certain demographic who liked a certain type of music. But since Ken Bruce’s defection in 2023, a tectonic plate shift that shook the foundations of New Broadcasting House and ignited talk of “crises” and “brain drains” and ravens in towers, the station stopped bothering to pretend it was doing something radical or different and just let its success speak for itself, as with increasing inevitability more Beeb-weary DJs and more evangelistic listeners left “the other station” and never looked back.
Which is how we find Zoe Ball’s new afternoon show promoted with the distinctly un-BBC tag line: “They might have Cox, but we’ve got Ball”. It sounds both like vindication and a threat.
The announcement that Ball was to join Greatest Hits in July – the same week Sara Cox made her energising debut in Ball’s former Radio 2 breakfast slot – did not come as much of a surprise. She had left her Saturday afternoon Radio 2 show in December, had struggled balancing her family commitments with the demands of the Breakfast Show in the months before she left that in 2024, and she had spoken on her podcast with Jo Whiley earlier this year – with her usual candour and vulnerability – about the “seven stages of grief and rejection” she experienced after not getting the job hosting Strictly Come Dancing.
