{"id":883878,"date":"2026-09-08T01:16:13","date_gmt":"2026-09-08T01:16:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/883878\/"},"modified":"2026-09-08T01:16:13","modified_gmt":"2026-09-08T01:16:13","slug":"zoe-ball-has-found-her-home-on-greatest-hits","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/883878\/","title":{"rendered":"Zoe Ball has found her home on Greatest Hits"},"content":{"rendered":"

Greatest Hits Radio<\/a> makes no secret of the fact that a central pillar of its identity is in plundering BBC Radio 2<\/a> of its presenters \u2013 and its listeners.<\/p>\n

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\u2019s<\/a> defection in 2023, a tectonic plate shift that shook the foundations of New Broadcasting House and ignited talk of \u201ccrises\u201d and \u201cbrain drains\u201d 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 \u201cthe other station\u201d and never looked back.<\/p>\n

Which is how we find Zoe Ball\u2019s<\/a> new afternoon show promoted with the distinctly un-BBC tag line: \u201cThey might have Cox, but we\u2019ve got Ball\u201d. It sounds both like vindication and a threat.<\/p>\n

The announcement that Ball was to join Greatest Hits in July \u2013 the same week Sara Cox made her energising debut<\/a> in Ball\u2019s former Radio 2 breakfast slot \u2013 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 \u2013 with her usual candour and vulnerability \u2013 about the \u201cseven stages of grief and rejection\u201d she experienced after not getting the job hosting Strictly Come Dancing.<\/p>\n

She has of course been nothing but gracious about the BBC and her former station (for all her \u201cladette\u201d history, she has always been an effusive personality), but there had just been the air of a rut about her \u2013 the suggestion that she felt overdue some kind of change. \u201cI\u2019ve tidied out the loft, I\u2019d done all my runs to the tip. The garden is OK and I am slightly going a little bit mad,\u201d she told The Times this weekend.<\/p>\n

Greatest Hits, for the listener at least, is the opposite of change. Ball\u2019s show comes after Bruce\u2019s \u2013 \u201cI\u2019m so thrilled to be his radio neighbour once again\u201d \u2013 and before Simon Mayo\u2019s; it is punctuated with trailers for programmes from people like Paul Gambaccini, and one caller phoned in to point out that its title, Zoe Ball in the Afternoon, must be an homage to the late Steve Wright who was \u201calways there, and I\u2019m sure you\u2019re going to carry that enthusiasm on\u201d. Greatest Hits, in other words, is what Radio 2 sounded like until about five years ago.<\/p>\n

\"KenKen Bruce, Ball and Simon Mayo are ex-BBC traitors and unashamed about capitalising on it (Photo: Greatest Hits Radio)<\/p>\n

And so Ball sounds exactly as you expect her to: maternal, relatable, reassuring, relentlessly positive and totally at ease around an A-list guest, the first of whom was Hugh Jackman. She was inundated with well-wishing, conspiratorial callers delighted that she has at last joined their club, which must have calmed her nerves (when 4pm rolled around she said she was a \u201cbit sweaty\u201d, and that she might actually sleep that night) and seemed to marvel at the playlist \u2013 which is good enough to offset any irritation from adverts, which I stopped noticing after a while.<\/p>\n

After her opening track, Kiki Dee\u2019s \u201cI\u2019ve Got the Music in Me\u201d, she said with some relief \u201cthey really do play the best tunes around here,\u201d and given Abba, Fleetwood Mac, Blondie, America, Bryan Ferry and Everything But the Girl followed, it was impossible to argue.<\/p>\n

Relief, I imagine, is what most ex-Radio 2 presenters probably feel once they get behind the Greatest Hits decks. Cox sounded invigorated and in command when she launched her Radio 2 Breakfast Show this summer, and she had to: the stakes were high, as the BBC fights to prevent its listeners from fleeing to commercial stations. But no such pressure hangs over the DJs on Greatest Hits, who I understand are very well remunerated (though Ball had been the BBC\u2019s second-highest earner) and do not bear the responsibility of preserving the future of the BBC or fulfilling its charter or representing its values or proving they are worth the licence fee.<\/p>\n

They don\u2019t have to move with the times. They don\u2019t have to innovate. They don\u2019t have to appeal to new generations. They don\u2019t even have to play any new music. Not doing that, in fact, is exactly what has made the station so formidable.<\/p>\n

Ball doesn\u2019t sound like a woman unleashed on Greatest Hits \u2013 she sounds at ease. It\u2019s familiar, it\u2019s comfortable, it is another reminder that a \u201chome\u201d and community is still there for listeners who feel that endless change and schedule shake-ups and retirements and deaths and defections have left Radio 2 a strange and different place. I\u2019m afraid the BBC probably should be worried.<\/p>\n

\u2018Zoe Ball in the Afternoon\u2019 is on Greatest Hits Radio on weekdays from 1-4pm<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Greatest Hits Radio makes no secret of the fact that a central pillar of its identity is in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":883879,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[64,63,198473,134,453675,136,527],"class_list":["post-883878","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-music","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-bbc-radio-2","tag-entertainment","tag-greatest-hits-radio","tag-music","tag-zoe-ball"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/883878","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=883878"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/883878\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/883879"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=883878"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=883878"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=883878"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}