On the day Frank Sinatra died, and the news broke in Britain at dawn, a BBC camera crew arrived unannounced at Broadcasting House. They were convinced such a cataclysm would have the Light Programme jettisoning its existing schedules and playing Ol' Blue Eyes wall-to-wall. They could not have been more wrong. There was one Sinatra song played on the hour throughout the day, plus succinct, informative, dignified news bulletins. Nobody had told BBC Television that the Light Programme is now Radio 2 and, from Monday to Saturday, plays virtually no Sinatra at all. These days you are more likely to hear Elton John, the Spice Girls and Paul Simon. That is not a jibe, merely a reflection on how much Radio 2 has narrowed its primetime music policy. Whether a commercial station, constrained as it is by a legal "promise of performance", could change its output in such a way without having to get anyone's permission, is another matter altogether. Radio 2 has never been the most talked-about station in the land. But it is worth pointing out - partly because the BBC itself is so loath to point it out and refuses, for example, to give figures for individual shows - that it is quite astonishingly successful. For more than a year it has had the highest share of total listening of any British radio station, overtaking Radio 1 (which still has a bigger audience, even though its listeners do not listen for as long) in 1996. Its weekly audience of 8.9m is now within whistling distance of Radio 1's 9.7m. Terry Wogan's breakfast show is the most popular in the land in terms of its average audience, measured every half-hour throughout its run at 1.435m. (Radio 4's Today programme is in second place with 1.403m, Radio 1's Kevin Greening and Zoë Ball third with 1.057m, Capital FM's Chris Tarrant - local radio! - fourth with 421,000 and Chris Evans of Virgin fifth with 343,000.) In the early evening, silky-smooth John Dunn's show, winner of a Sony award earlier this month, is again in the top spot, pulling an average half-hour audience of 883,000. Radio 1's Dave Pearce comes second with 703,000, and Radio 4's PM programme is third with 615,000. And in every British city, apart from Belfast, Glasgow and Sheffield, Radio 2 enjoys a higher market share than does Radio 1 - even though both are always beaten by a local commercial service. Finally, it should be pointed out that Radio 2, even though not based on the charts, has not lost its capacity for making hits. It did so with the infectious Dance the Night Away, by the Cuban-American group the Mavericks, and is likely to do so again this week with its numerous airings of Julian Lennon's harmonious new release, Day After Day.

Despite all this, Radio 2 tends to fall between two stools as far as the rest of the media are concerned. It is not hip, raw, trendy and outrageous, so tends not to excite television or popular papers, for whom Chris Evans continues to be the focus of fascination. But neither is it intellectually weighty or artistically pretentious, so has never interested the highbrow world. There is some intellectual snobbery at work here, as well as the fact that Radio 2 is simply less important than Radios 3 or 4 when it comes to high art and serious culture. The relative neglect of Radio 2 results in some of its presenters being less enthusiastically acknowledged than they should be. It may be that Wogan is its biggest name, and he does have the widest vocabulary, seemingly inexhaustible whimsy and that peculiarly Irish, almost surreal, verbal dexterity. But the one with the greatest self-discipline, and absolutely immaculate timing, is Ken Bruce, who is to the art of presenting popular music what Steven Isserlis is to playing the cello - the practitioners' practitioner, able to judge every moment with unerring skill. The one with the greatest stamina is, of course, Jimmy Young, still beavering away at 73. There was a wonderful moment nine days ago when he was talking to Bill Thomas, a solicitor who appears every Friday, about a query from a man who discovered his telephone line had been used for making sex calls to Chile and wondered what legal redress he had. "Why is Chile used for sex lines?" asked Jimmy, evidently quite baffled. "Perhaps they're for South Americans," ventured Thomas helpfully. Someone should tell them the lines that terminate in Chile are no more intended for South Americans than those that terminate in Haiti are for Caribbeans or those that go to Niue are for Antipodeans, but are all used by international pornographers frustrated by restrictive legislation in their own countries. But that ignorance simply shows us what a nice, wholesome, uncorrupted man Jimmy Young is. There is only one blot at present and that is the unaccountable decision to dispense with the excellent Debbie Thrower. She left on Friday and her 90-minute slot has melted away. Instead, Ken Bruce gets an extra 30 minutes each day and Ed Stewart an extra hour. Thrower is going to present Collector's Lot, so Radio 2's loss is Channel 4's gain. But the network's decision to let her go is a stupid one, and she will be sorely missed.

 

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