Shake-up for Brisbane radio
What's going on at 4BC, KIIS, the ABC and SEN. And is networking inevitable?
I wrote recently that any decisions about changes to Brisbane radio line-ups for 2025 would be made upon the release of ratings survey 5.
Well, the first results are in — and even the Daily Mail is in on the act, reporting a big shake-up coming at 4BC (which is not news to readers of this newsletter or those who are generally alert).
I’ll get back that later in this missive but suffice to say now that the Mail omits to mention that “hard-hitting talkback” was not really working for 4BC before the decision to hire the “light entertainment” trio of Laurel Edwards, Gary Clare, and Mark Hine (pictured above). And that 4BC bosses botched the transition by failing to commit one way or the other, allowing 4BH to snare audience it could have claimed.
Any move in the direction of hard talk is, in my opinion (and that of other industry observers), doomed to failure — especially if next month’s state election delivers a Liberal National Party government, because there’ll be less for the conservative shock jocks to get angry about.
First up in confirmed changes, husband and wife will go head-to-head next year when, according to RadioInfo, Corey Parker joins Ian “Heals” Healy on SENQ breakfast.
Parker’s wife, Margaux, is a member of Triple M’s breakfast line-up with Greg “Marto” Martin and Dan Anstey.
Corey Parker replaces Pat Welsh, who has been covering sport on television and radio for five decades and is well-liked and highly respected, is said to be semi-retiring. Let’s hope it’s not the last we hear from him.
SEN replaced 4KQ on the AM dial but due to its niche sports programming it rarely troubles the scorekeeper at ratings time.
The Parkers join the Davidsons among couples who compete on Brisbane radio, Stav Davidson hosts B105’s top-rating breakfast show while Katrina, a comedian you may have seen performing on a P&O cruise or at the Sit Down Comedy Club, is a casual producer and presenter at ABC Brisbane.
Speaking of the ABC, the word from insiders is that there will be no change in the breakfast shift but that the 2025 line-up will be tweaked to find a permanent place for Ellen Fanning, the celebrated Queensland broadcaster who spent many years in Sydney, hosting the ABC’s flagship current affairs program AM and then worked in many prominent roles, including a stint as a reporter on Nine’s 60 Minutes.
Fanning (who listeners to 4KQ many years ago may remember as Ellen Stewart) is currently reading ABC TV bulletins twice a week.
Kate O’Toole has already announced that she is stepping down from the Saturday Morning show, so it’s possible that one of the current ABC Brisbane weekday announcers will move to the weekends.
A wildcard is Spencer Howson, who is currently filling in on Saturday breakfast on ABC Gold Coast. Will he get that gig full time? Does he want it?
Moving on to KIIS 97.3 Despite the current line-up of Robin Bailey and Kip Wightman performing very competitively, industry insiders insist the Australian Radio Network (ARN) is determined to replace them with Sydney duo Kyle Sandilands and Jackie “O” Henderson.
This is despite the Kyle and Jackie O Show, which rates highly in Sydney, performing quite poorly in its initial months on air in Melbourne.
Sandilands has made no secret of his desire to be heard in his hometown, and the word is that ARN management is convinced networking is the way forward.
ARN is still trying to organise a reshuffle of radio licences through a takeover of Southern Cross Austereo (SCA), which owns the Today and Triple M networks. Its initial partner fell out, but ARN is said to be in talks with Australian Community Media (ACM).
The problem is that none of the media companies, including all the radio networks and the Nine, Seven and 10 television networks, have especially healthy bottom lines. ARN’s financial results are on a downward trend and ACM has begun a series of redundancies in its newspaper division.
So, mergers or takeovers are both inevitable and problematic, not least due to regulatory reasons — perhaps a change in legislation is needed — and jostling as to who the senior partners would be.
I’m told ARN’s grand plan is to own a networked KIIS, with Sandilands and Henderson headlining, and a networked Triple M, with a national breakfast show hosted by Christian O’Connell.
One stumbling block to bringing K&JO into Brisbane is whether audiences here will embrace them and their content.
Some observers think we will, on the grounds that Brisbane is more like Sydney than Melbourne is. But having possibly scraped the bottom of the barrel by playing a guessing game involving recordings of staff members urinating, where do K&JO go now in terms of “edgy content”? And are they back on the “toothless tiger” regulators’ radar?
Two other factors are in play. One is just how long Sandilands’ and Henderson’s “shelf life” proves to be. The double act has been around a long time, and as others — including the once-unassailable John Laws — have found out, the audience can fall out of love with you very quickly.
The other factor is that the “Mad Witches” online group, which played a role in the downfall of Alan Jones, would almost certainly ramp up its campaign against the Sydney duo if they go national, targetting advertisers who support the show.
ARN, which has bet the farm on Kyle and Jackie O by signing them to a 10-year contract said to be worth $200 million, must at least be nervous. Even getting rid of them, if needs be, could break the bank.
Back to 4BC, where there’s some jostling to replace the aforementioned Laurel, Gary and Mark in breakfast. The name that keeps emerging — including in the Daily Mail article, which reads in parts like it’s been written by his cheer squad — is Peter Fegan, who is a Nine News reporter and Weekends host on BC.
Some rumours suggest he’ll be in a double act with Sofie Formica, who is currently filling in for the vacationing Laurel Edwards. Mornings host Bill McDonald’s name is also being mentioned, as are those of many people within and outside the station — while the Daily Mail suggests McDonald will be swapped with Drive host Peter Gleeson. (Gleeson is described as a “respected newsman”. Some in the media beg to differ, since he was sacked by The Courier-Mail amid a plagiarism scandal.)
The other name in play, who I’ve mentioned before and is included in the Mail article, is Luke Bradnam. If so, he’d be competing with his twin brother, Nova’s Ash Bradnam, on the breakfast airwaves.
My thoughts about how 4BC bosses should proceed are well covered in previous editions of this newsletter. One extra tip they can have for free: don’t listen to the people making the most noise in the media comments sections. They are not us.
The biggest fear among staff at 4BC is that Nine Radio will simply give up and revert to a straight relay of 2GB.
If that happens, it will (for the most part) not be the fault of current or recent former staff, who’ve all tried their hardest — it will be senior management who refuse to “get” Brisbane radio because the style of broadcasting that works down south does not work here.
I’ve been listening to 4BC since I was a boy, I enjoyed working there when I did and I do wish the station well, but I sincerely believe Brisbane audiences will not take in great numbers to a hard right-wing talk station.
One interesting theory about this is that there is a lot more anger in Sydney because of the faster pace of life and heightened cost-of-living pressures. This explains the success of Ben Fordham and Ray Hadley at 2GB and perhaps that of Kyle and Jackie O at KIIS.
Maybe life will speed up here, too …
Whatever happens in the short term, networking would seem to be the go across the board in the not-too-distant future. One reason is financial: the networks can’t afford the salaries of staff in each state (especially when the big names are earning so much), and they prefer to purse network-wide advertisers, reasoning that local clients are too expensive to chase. (One might suggest they hand the licence over to somebody who seriously wants to make a go of the Brisbane business, in the way lessee Ace Radio has of Nine’s other Brisbane property, 4BH.)
But the big reason is that younger audiences no longer especially care about “local” radio, they are used to consuming online content from around the world. But they do want something that speaks to them, wherever it comes from.
As the existing audience disappears, something very different will emerge. And the current players seem ill-equipped to handle it.
7pm update: 4BC newsreader Steve Barker announced his resignation today.
Disclaimer: Brett Debritz has worked at 4BC and the ABC and will soon launch a podcast. (With “soon” being a fluid concept.)