Breaking: 2025 4BC line-up revealed
Weekdays remain “live and local” on commercial talk radio station.
On the surface, there was no big surprise in the announcement of 4BC’s line-up for the new year. But the devil may be in the detail (or lack of it).
The Monday to Friday shows live from the Cannon Hill studios will be:
4BC Breakfast with Peter Fegan: 530am-9am
4BC Mornings with Bill McDonald: 9am-12pm
4BC Afternoons with Sofie Formica: 12pm-3pm
4BC Drive with Gary Hardgrave: 3pm-6pm
Wide World of Sports with Peter Psaltis: 6pm-7pm
The announcement reinforces the status quo, formalising the appointments of recent “temporary” announcers Fegan in Breakfast and Hardgrave in Drive.
In a media release, 4BC content manager Siobhain McDonnell said: “This lineup reflects 4BC’s unwavering commitment to delivering live and local content. Each host brings a deep-rooted understanding of Brisbane’s needs, and together, they will forge meaningful connections with our audience.
“Brisbane is experiencing unprecedented growth, and this team is ready to lead the conversations that matter most to our vibrant, evolving community.
“With our state-of-the-art studios set for 2025, 4BC is poised to deliver a gold-standard audio experience, ensuring the very best content no matter where our listeners are tuning in.”
The release made no mention of the Weekend line-up. At the moment, Olympia Kwitowski is hosting Weekend Breakfast, with the Weekend Mornings show — previously hosted by Fegan and, before him, Spencer Howson — is on relay from 2GB in Sydney.
Hopefully and ideally, both shows will be local in 2025. There may be fewer listeners on the weekend, but their expectations of their local station don’t change. (And listeners have certainly voted against the imported Sydney weekend mornings and afternoon shows in recent ratings surveys.)
Importantly, Kwitowski and Formica are the only local female voices on the station. Changing that would tend to reinforce suggestions that the station and the network is a “boys’ club” — an image its parent company, Nine Entertainment, really does not (or should not) wish to perpetuate.
On air this morning, Fegan said the station “had lost its way” for a while —presumably a reference to the tenure of Laurel Edwards, Gary Clare and Mark Hine and a classic hits format in the Breakfast show.
While their ratings slumped in their final few surveys, they initially delivered good ratings results for 4BC. Fegan has yet to turn the ship around. LGM started the year on a 7.5 percentage audience share, up from 6.4 in the final survey for 2023. Fegan is currently sitting on 4.6, and it’s difficult to see a huge turnaround in that number in the immediate future.
Of course, the station is in a rebuilding stage, and there is a lot to do. And common wisdom (which, as I’ve noted before, is not always correct) suggests that news-talk stations, which tend to skew to the right politically, tend to do less well when there is a conservative government, which is now the case in Queensland.
As a fan of local radio, and a former 4BC producer, I want to see the station succeed.
But I continue to wonder whether the Nine Radio bosses in Sydney have a handle on the wants and needs of the Brisbane audience. (Have, for example, they taken into account that, politically and socially, big pockets of the capital — including the younger listeners they have to attract to succeed — think very differently to the powers that be in State Parliament?
At least they have not done as they have in the Perth market and reduced the number of daytime shifts from four to three, making each announcer remain on air for an extra hour. Believe me, four hours of live talk radio is difficult to produce and present.
Meanwhile, a good portion of 4BC’s daily line-up will soon be coming from Sydney, with the holiday break seeing former Labor government spinner Shane Doherty covering Drive and former Triple M star Dean Miller on Breakfast. The mid-part of the day will be on relay.
The inclusion of Doherty apparently ruffled some feathers at Cannon Hill. (I’m also told any expectations that he’ll necessarily present a left-leaning program may not be met.)
Whether he has his eyes on a more permanent presence at the station remains to be seen.
Needless to say, a lot of eyes will be on the final ratings survey of this year and the first few of next.
Commercial talk ought to be a strong part of the radio mix. I wish this line-up all the best.
Meanwhile …
In Sydney, WSFM won the ratings survey for the first time a couple of weeks ago. So, what has its owner, ARN, decided to do? Change its name to Gold 101.7 and promised a “refreshed” sound, of course.
If it ain’t broke …
Friday p.m. update: Mike Byrne, the WSFM content director, had just been made redundant— after taking the station to number one. It’s a cruel and often inexplicable industry.