‘The intention was to lose listeners’: When changing radio presenters goes wrong
Scott Mills took over from Zoe Ball as presenter of BBC Radio 2’s breakfast show in February 2025
Since the 51-year-old took over from Zoe Ball as presenter of BBC Radio 2’s breakfast show in February, more than 600,000 listeners have fled the station. When Ball presented her final programme last year she had an average audience of 6.8 million, according to official industry figures. Mills now has 6.2 million listeners, while Radio 2 has fallen below 13 million weekly listeners for the first time since records began.
For all the complaints that Mills’s mainstream, non-threatening (some might say “boring”) DJ patter is to blame for the audience exodus, radio bosses fiddle with the schedule at their own peril. Loyal listeners do not like their routines being disrupted, regardless of who the new presenter is.
Scott Mills’s non-threatening, mainstream DJ patter has not gone down well with all listeners - BBC
“You’ve got to remember that listeners dedicate loads of time to consume these people,” says radio industry expert Matt Deegan. “They are part of their households. If you listen to a breakfast show, you wake up every morning, and they are the first people you really hear from. You get used to it. Your day is matched by the features.”
It will probably not help the mood of Mills, or his BBC bosses, to know that Ball is now at the top of the podcast charts after recently launching Dig It with her erstwhile Radio 2 mucker Jo Whiley. But he may be comforted to know that he is far from the first DJ who struggled to reach the heights of their predecessor.
Here are some of the most notable radio handovers of recent years.
Ken Bruce and Vernon Kay (2023)
Vernon Kay (right) replaced Ken Bruce on BBC Radio 2’s mid-morning show
If the departure of Ball from the Radio 2 breakfast show triggered a trickle of listeners to switch over, when Ken Bruce left his mid-morning slot after 31 years behind the microphone, it caused a flood.
Bruce took his mild-mannered style – and, crucially, the Popmaster quiz that he had personally trademarked in 1990 – with him to Bauer’s Greatest Hits Radio in a similar timeslot in 2023. When he presented his final Radio 2 show, his show had an audience of 8.3 million; his replacement, Vernon Kay, only had 6.9 million in his first three months.
Now 74, Bruce remains a broadcasting juggernaut and has the most listened-to programme on British commercial radio.
Terry Wogan and Chris Evans (2009/10)
Chris Evans and Terry Wogan attend the Radio Academy Hall Of Fame in 2009 - Danny Martindale/Getty Images
How do you replace a broadcasting legend like Terry Wogan? It was an unenviable task for anybody to take on, with Wogan having hosted the Radio 2 breakfast show for 28 years before he bowed out in 2009. But the choice of Chris Evans – once the enfant terrible of British broadcasting – enraged many of the Togs (Terry’s Old Geezers and Gals) who had been dedicated Wogan followers for years.
Things turned so nasty that Wogan himself had to make a public intervention on his successor’s behalf and implore his fans to give him a chance. And, despite the howls of protest from some Togs, they did: in his first quarter on the air, Evans amassed an audience of more than 9.5 million listeners, compared with Wogan’s final cohort of 8.1 million. It proved to be a short-lived high, however, and within a year he had fallen back by more than one million listeners. Evans, 59, now presents the breakfast show on Virgin Radio.
Chris Moyles and Nick Grimshaw (2012)
Chris Moyles (left) was replaced by Nick Grimshaw in the Radio 1 breakfast slot
Like Wogan, Chris Moyles was a hard act for his successor to follow. Moyles was forced out of the Radio 1 breakfast slot after eight years in 2012 in favour of a 27-year-old Nick Grimshaw, as the BBC continued to chase younger listeners. It appeared to backfire as, within a year, Grimshaw had shed one million of Moyles’s audience.
Grimshaw said earlier this year that Ben Cooper, then the controller of Radio 1, was relaxed about the plunge in listener figures. “It was hard. But weirdly that was the intention – which sounds made-up but it’s not. The intention of Big Boss Ben [Cooper, the former controller of Radio 1] was to lose listeners. They wanted it to be dramatically younger.”
Matthew Bannister, Dave Lee Travis, Chris Evans, Mark Radcliffe and Marc Riley (1993-97)
Matthew Bannister wanted to drag Radio 1 towards the 21st century - Donald Maclellan/Getty Images
The arrival of Matthew Bannister as controller of Radio 1, in 1993, was the beginning of an unprecedented amount of upheaval at the BBC’s flagship music station. Bannister wanted to drag the station towards the 21st century in the face of opposition from listeners and DJs alike, many of whom had been there since its inception in the 1960s.
To try to reach younger audiences, Bannister banned music recorded before 1990 from being played and replaced eight long-serving DJs, such as Dave Lee Travis, who resigned live on air that August with the immortal words: “Changes are being made here which go against my principles, and I just cannot agree with them.”
Johnny Beerling, the founding controller of Radio 1, tells me that the obstinacy of DJs is always a problem for their bosses. “Presenters who hold a regular slot tend to think they own it and have a right to that spot forever,” he says.
Chris Evans, one of Bannister’s star hires, called him “The Fat Controller” and quit as presenter of the breakfast show in 1997 because Bannister refused to let him work a four-day week so that he could dedicate more time to presenting TFI Friday on Channel 4. He was replaced, in turn, by Mark Radcliffe and Mark Riley (aka Mark and Lard), but they were axed after just eight months because of low ratings. Zoe Ball took over, as the first female presenter of the programme, and steadied the ship.
Chris Tarrant and Johnny Vaughan (2004)
Johnny Vaughan and Chris Tarrant at Capital Radio headquarters in 2003 - Andy Butterton/PA Archive
It is easy to forget how popular Chris Tarrant’s Capital Radio breakfast show was, but he spent two decades bringing listeners to the London-only station in the mornings. By the time he left, in 2004, his audiences averaged 1.5 million every day. Despite the success, bosses felt like a change was needed, as Tarrant’s audience and the rest of the station’s listeners were very distinct groups.
“All the data showed that Capital had, in effect, two radio stations. It had the Chris Tarrant breakfast show with one audience, and the rest of the station with a different audience – and they were getting further and further apart,” says Deegan. “Even though they knew that losing Tarrant would hurt them with ratings and cash, they had to pull the plaster because doom was heading their way.”
The Big Breakfast’s Johnny Vaughan was tapped as his replacement, and Tarrant gave his public blessing to the younger man. But the decision backfired almost immediately, as within three months it emerged that Vaughan had lost 200,000 listeners, which sent Capital’s share price down by almost 10 per cent. Despite the inauspicious start, Vaughan stayed in post until the end of 2011.
Jimmy Young and Jeremy Vine (2003)
Jeremy Vine (right) replaced Jimmy Young in Radio 2’s early-afternoon slot
Jeremy Vine was an unusual choice to replace Jimmy Young in Radio 2’s early-afternoon slot. In 2003, Vine was a political reporter and Newsnight anchor – not who you would expect to be able to juggle serious listener phone-ins with whimsical magazine features before segueing into playing Abba.
Many of Young’s fans were dismayed by the change, but nobody was more annoyed than Young himself, who had presented the programme for more than three decades and had to practically be forced out from behind his desk. “Just so that we’re all singing from the same hymn book, it was not my idea to go,” he said on his last show. “I didn’t want to leave you at all and I know from your messages that you don’t want me to go either.” Vine defied the critics, however, and more 20 years on remains ensconced in his timeslot.
Simon Mayo and Jo Whiley (2018)
‘Sort of a disaster’: Simon Mayo and Jo Whiley demonstrated little chemistry between one another on air
The logic was simple for Radio 2 bosses. Simon Mayo was popular, Jo Whiley was popular. If you put the two together, they ought to become even more popular. Foolproof, right?
Wrong. Mayo had starting presenting the drive-time show solo in 2010 but, in a station shake-up intended to increase the prominence of female presenters, Whiley was added to an extended programme in 2018.
Unfortunately for all involved it was “sort of a disaster”, in Deegan’s words, as Mayo and Whiley appeared to have no chemistry with one another on air. Audience figures backed this up, with the number of listeners in their final quarter together down 6.9 per cent compared with a year previously, at six million. He soon made the leap from the BBC to commercial radio, while she continues to present an early evening show on Radio 2.
“Sometimes the slots or the combinations don’t work,” says Deegan. “They should work, but they don’t.”
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