The big news in radio this week (so far) is that Eddie McGuire* and Karl Stefanovic are now a double act and will be presenting a three-hour Drive show each Friday on ARN’S kind-of-national GOLD network.
My initial thoughts:
This seems very much like a toes-in-the-water exercise that could escalate into something big or quietly fade away depending on its level of success.
Since the show will also be seen (and heard) on Stan and 9Now, could this be a prequel to a merger between Nine and ARN, as we’ve seen recently with Seven and Southern Cross Austereo? Was it even part of the reason Nine sold its underperforming radio assets?
This a challenge not just to Triple M, which has the lion’s share of the audience ARN seems to be chasing, but also to Tapt (which bought 4BC, 2GB, 6PR and 3AW from Nine), which wants/needs to appeal to a younger (40-something rather than 70-something) demographic.
It seems designed to take the hybrid music/talk format that has characterised recent commercial FM Breakfast and Drive shows into more opinionated territory (which could flop badly or pose a real threat to the Tapt stations).
Will the show make much impact in Brisbane if it’s only available on DAB+, on the iHeart app and online, but not FM?
The big question for the radio industry is: will the advertisers who (with a gentle nudge from the Mad F—king Witches) abandoned ARN because of the smutty content of the Kyle and Jackie O Show on KIIS like whatever it is Karl and Eddie are going to do?
Breaking: In a social media post on Tuesday night, the MFW described the hiring of Stefanovic and McGuire as “brave. Or maybe just stupid”. The post referred to comments made by Maguire in 2021 and the interviewees Stefanovic had chosen for his recent podcasts.
Abandon ship!
The Australian Financial Review has run the numbers and it reckons Sting’s The Last Ship lost about $8 million of Queensland taxpayers’ money.
The newspaper said: “A Geordie rocker’s tale of Newcastle shipbuilders is a curious choice of show to open a new Brisbane theatre. But that didn’t stop QPAC going all in on it.”
It also noted the huge initial ticket price and subsequent drastic discounting (which regular Mister Brisbane readers will know all about) and claimed only about 82% of seats were sold.
The story continued:
“… it makes the government’s funding injection now look less like a strategic investment in local tourism and the arts and more like a generous donation to an international rock star’s retirement fund. Which brings us to the second criticism running around Queensland’s arts circles: if the government and QPAC are willing to foot a loss, shouldn’t that at least be in service of supporting local acts?”
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P.S.
One of the oldest tricks of the journalist’s trade is the gossip-column “blind item”, sometimes labelled “guess who, don’t sue”? Ostensibly these are stories so hot and edgy that they have to be disguised to protect the publication from defamation proceedings. But sometimes they can be so vague that they could refer to anybody — or nobody at all. But, hey, as I know all too well, that empty space isn’t going to fill itself…
Disclaimer: Brett Debritz used to work at 4BC before it was Tapt.
*Eddie’s surname was misspelt in the email edition.