[DavidWhitfield]

"From Monday 6 March, Radio 2 favourite Gary Davies, host of the network’s much loved Sounds of the 80s (Saturday, 8-10pm), will present the show until May. Gary will also usher in Radio 2’s new weekday pop quiz."

Noteworthy that the BBC are planning to retain the pop quiz element of Ken's show when he departs. I wonder at what point within the reworked show this will feature - people have become used to there being a pop quiz at 10:30am on Radio 2 so I can't imagine the BBC want to break this routine, but one might also suppose that the folks moving over to listen to Ken on GHR would feel comforted by the familiar 10:30am scheduling so I am interested to see what happens. I can't imagine them both going for 10:30am, as I'm sure there's a pocket of quiz enthusiasts who would listen to one quiz and then turn over to play the other if given the chance, and this would eliminate the possibility of that.

I must say, as an aside, the wording of Ken's 'I'm finishing on Friday' statement - specifically "I had intended fulfilling my contract until the end of March but the BBC has decided it wants me to leave earlier" - does make it sound as though things have soured behind the scenes somewhat. It saddens me to think of the parting as being in any way acrimonious; Ken brought huge numbers of listeners to Radio 2, and devoted decades of his life to the BBC, and he's perfectly entitled to pursue other opportunities at this stage in his life should he wish to. One cannot know for certain what is happening behind the scenes but Ken's departure and the surrounding details about how it was all handled don't exactly paint the BBC in the best light for me.