Triple M is offering listeners the chance to wake up with someone new every day. But there’s a catch, which I’ll get to later.
“Pilot Week”, which begins on December 15, promises Australia-wide exposure for six radio shows meted out at one per morning.
The experiment will, according to a Triple M media release, offer “entertaining personalities, fresh voices and compelling storytellers the opportunity to showcase their talent on a national stage”.
After a shout-out for applicants, the winners (with edited descriptions from the release) are:
Monday – Swag on the Beat: Jack Say & Isaac Gibbons
Best mates since high school, Melbourne duo Jack and Isaac bring their trademark quirk and absurdity to Triple M.
Tuesday – The MacPack: Jake, Joe & Riley McKenna
Perth brothers Jake, Joe and Riley deliver high energy antics, stories and sibling chemistry, resulting in undeniable radio gold.
Wednesday – Paddy & Maz: Paddy Gerrard & Maz Compton
From Triple M Central Coast 107.7 Breakfast show, Paddy & Maz are bringing feel-good radio to a national audience.
Thursday – Jean, Tim & Pep: Jean Margaret, Tim Mountford & Mark Pepper
What happens when three strangers walk into a studio mid–life pivot? Meet Jean, Tim & Pep. Jean, a former lawyer chasing her radio dream; Tim is a prolific audio producer with years working behind the scenes in radio; and “Pep” is an everyday Aussie — a car salesman from Melbourne.
Friday – The Tag Team: Shaun Malseed, Hunter Smith & Harry Lloyd
Originating on Melbourne’s JOY FM, The Tag Team return to radio in a big way.
Saturday – Yeah Good: Max Price, Troy Kinne & Tom Siegert
Sketch comedy creators Max, Troy and Tom bring their trademark irreverence and wit to the Triple M lineup.
Matthew O’Reilly, SCA’s head of broadcast content, said: “Pilot Week has already been a huge success, offering a unique opportunity to discover fresh talent, with an incredible array of talent putting their hand up for a Triple M first. We were impressed by the diversity of applications, from everyday Aussies to internet favourites and experienced broadcasters, all with unique stories and ideas.”
Note that word “diversity” there. What occurs to me when I look at that list, and look at the photos provided by Triple M, is that the diversity of the final line-up doesn’t extend to gender. There are very few women among them.
And underscores what has long been an issue in radio — the relativity small number of female voices and the opportunities either not offered to, or taken away from, women.
Just ask Olympia Kwitowski, whose 4BC Weekend Mornings program* was axed to make way for a blokey blokes’ show hosted by Paul Burt.
At the time, the change was described as a commercial decision, presumably because Burt brought with him some heavyweight sponsors from the boating and fishing world. But in most surveys across this year, Burt’s audience share and cumulative audience (“cume”) were lower than Kwitowski’s had been a year before.
Tellingly, despite 4BC using a range of casual announcers over the past year — almost all of them male — Kwitowski was not given further on-air opportunities other than her work as a traffic reporter.
On social media recently, Kwitowski shared some of the misogyny she has faced.
There is plenty of other anecdotal evidence that women don’t get the same opportunities as men.
And then there’s misinformation, such as the common industry belief that “women don’t like listening to other women on the radio”.
Former top-rating ABC announcer Spencer Howson, who researched the issue as part of his masters degree, addressed this statement in a guest post on the Radio Today website, saying he and others had failed to find any evidence that this was the case.
He quotes Deborah Knight (who no longer works in radio) as saying: “It’s not based on any true research that’s been conducted. It’s trotted out [as] a bit of an excuse for why there hasn’t been a prominence or an equal representation of women on radio in Australia in the past.”
Howson goes on to write:
Adam Lang, the former CEO of Macquarie Media, which became Nine Radio in 2020, said that he had not seen any research, whether it be internal, industry or academic, to back the notion that women don’t like women on radio: “Many people subscribe to it. I don’t. I hope that they are progressively out-numbered. I’ve never believed it. I think it was kind of like a rumour that got passed around. Enough people believed it. And it can cause a lot of harm.”
And ABC Content Quality Manager Phil Ashley-Brown, whose role includes discovering and nurturing new talent, said there have been some very successful solo female broadcasters over the years, including Angela Catterns and Virginia Trioli (pictured below), “who have huge audiences and are successful among male and female listeners, so I think it’s an old notion that has been disproven”.
Of course, there are some prominent women in Australian radio — including Jackie Henderson, Carrie Bickmore, Chrissie Swan and the soon-to-return (to Nova Brisbane) Susie O’Neill — but they are very much in the minority.
And too often we see women replaced by men — Kwitowski at 4BC; Robin Bailey at KIIS 97.3 — or outnumbered by them. Where there is a “zoo” format, it’s always two (or three) blokes and one woman.
So, well done Triple M for giving a go to some fresh talent (although some of these people are not entirely new — one of them has had a TV tonight show). And, in a way, it’s not fair that I seem to be singling you out in this regard, because this is an industry-wide issue.
But, if this line-up is an indication of what the future holds, despite women making up nearly 51% of the Australia population, they will continue to account for less than a quarter of on-air roles in radio.
By the way — and this could be the case here — Howson’s thesis also notes that woman may not be putting themselves forward for radio presenter jobs. All the same, like good headhunters in other industries, the radio networks should be seeking them out.
7.10am update: Today on 4BC, Sofie Formica is hosting Breakfast, with Chloe Affleck reading the news and Olympia Kwitowski presenting traffic updates. It’s a “very different and refreshing sound”, according to one listener.
7.25am update: If you want to read more of Spencer Howson’s Radio Today articles on women in radio, here are the links: part two, part three, part four, part five.
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P.S.
We all know AI doesn’t always get things right. I do use it sparingly on this blog —for illustrations and for fun stuff — but I don’t rely on it to get its facts right. Just as well. Here’s a cautionary tale about the use of AI to create “news” stories.
An update to my post about Peter Psaltis. Sources tell me that 4BC will run a networked edition of Wide World of Sports, and that these plans have been in place for a while. If that’s the case, it means one less hour each day of local content. Mind you, as I’ve mentioned in the past, sport doesn’t rate especially well, and there is a case to spell it, as they’d say in horse racing, and try something else in the 6-7pm slot.
Congratulations to Triple Zed on its 50th birthday today. I can’t claim to have been there when it all began, but I had a little to do with the station when I was a student, including a very short stint in the newsroom. I also attended a few of their gigs over the years and have been an on-air guest once or twice. The station continues to play an important role in introducing people to sounds and ideas they won’t hear from the mainstream media.
*A disclosure of direct interest here: Along with first host Bill McDonald, I created the Weekend Breakfast show for 4BC, wrangled the talent, and produced it for a little over a year. It was a leading show in its timeslot, rating well above the station average. That success largely continued under Kwitowski’s tenure in the chair.
With a few exceptions over the years, I am one of those women who prefers to listen to men on the radio.