and Jeremy Vine—have agreed to take pay cuts following the recent controversy over equal salaries at the broadcaster. 28 January – After nearly 78 years on air, The Sunday Hour is broadcast on BBC Radio 2 for the final time. 29 January – BBC Radio Cymru 2 begins broadcasting. It airs as an opt-out service for two hours every morning on digital and online platforms as a music and entertainment alternative to the main network. January – Rob Cowan leaves BBC Radio 3 for Classic FM after seventeen years at the station. He is replaced as presenter of Essential Classics by Ian Skelly. February 2 February – Christian O'Connell announces that he will be leaving Absolute Radio and emigrating to Australia to host the Gold 104.3 breakfast programme in Melbourne. 4 February – Relaunch of the BBC Radio 2 religion-themed magazine programme Good Morning Sunday, presented by Kate Bottley and Jason Mohammad. Comedian Jack Whitehall appears as a guest on Desert Island Discs, where he expresses regret over a joke he made about Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip during the 2012 edition of Channel 4's The Big Fat Quiz of the Year. 6 February – Noel Edmonds has set up an online radio station, Positively Noel, dedicated to broadcasting negative messages about Lloyds Bank, a company with which the presenter has been involved in a decade-long legal dispute. 7 February – Figures from RAJAR indicate that The Radio 1 Breakfast Show with Nick Grimshaw has shown some recovery from its worst ever audience during the third quarter of 2017. The number of listeners to the show increased from 4.93m listeners in the third quarter of 2017 to 5.72m listeners in January 2018, an increase of almost 800,000. 16 February – Speaking to BBC 6 Music Glastonbury Festival organiser Emily Eavis says she would like to ban plastic bottles from next year's festival. 24 February – BBC Radio 1 overhauls its weekend schedule. The changes see Maya Jama and Jordan North joining the network as weekend presenters, fronting the Greatest Hits programme, while current presenter Matt Edmondson moves to present a weekday afternoon show on which he will be joined by a different guest co-presenter each week. Alice Levine moves from afternoons to weekend breakfasts to co-present with Dev. 26 February – Former Emmerdale actress Roxanne Pallett joins York's Minster FM to present the breakfast show alongside Ben Fry. March 1