Craig Bruce’s commentary regarding Hughesy was appalling and completely unfair.
Melbourne Radio Wars could be a good podcast but sadly most week’s conversations are hyjacked by the hosts need to create clickbait headlines in the sad hope that they may get mentioned in news.com.au
Melbourne has made it clear they couldn’t care less about K&J yet most podcast episodes are dominated with highly repetitive discussion regarding that show which appears to have little purpose other than to fulfill their desperate desire to be name checked on air by Kyle.
Love that Craig defends the 2DayFM music choices, as if it lead to any kind of successful ratings to play Mariah Carey for the target market he has in his head.
But then he also acts like Dave Hughes has total control over the show. Hamish & Andy have the same complaints in their Remembering podcast about being forced to do certain interviews and promos, it’s just the reality of radio.
Craig hasn’t had a direct role in radio since 2015 and it shows.
I’ve just caught up on the pod and that’s 20 minutes of my life I’ll never get back. I think Craig had some good points, but also completely ignored a bunch of relevant factors. He’s far too defensive of the 2Day strategy which has clearly been unsuccessful for the last decade constantly rating 3-4.
I think Hughesy’s comments were taken a bit too seriously given where and how they were delivered but they clearly came from a place of truth. For Craig to hang the failure of the show on Hughesy’s poor attitude is harsh and fails to consider the role that 2Day management played. 2Day also never had a clear strategy, constantly changing the target audience and music. At the beginning of Dave’s time on breakfast his name wasn’t even in the show title, so it wasn’t his show as much as many other hosts get to “own” their show - he was clearly just filling a seat that 2Day wanted to control. I think Craig is right that hosts need to have more agency and buy-in their shows, but in this case I’m not convinced that it was lacking based just off Hughesy’s attitude.
I think the podcast has run it’s course. It was quite interesting last year when there was a lot happening - anticipation of what shows would do and how that would impact the ratings, then analysis of what actually did happen. But now that the market’s stabilised and each show has gone back to just running its own race, there’s nowhere near enough of that type of content anymore.
They said that they would cast the net further and look at other markets, such as Sydney breakfast with Jimmy and Nath starting (or continuing) on 2Day, but that’s been pretty minimal. I think that the reality of monitoring more than 3 shows suffieciently to give any sort of thorough analysis is just too much work for 3 people who are basically doing the podcast in their spare time.
This week they had Hayley Sproull on promoting her Melbourne Comedy Festival show, except it was clearly prerecorded well in advance. She spoke about it being in the last 2 weeks of the festival, as though that was still many weeks away - but when released on 12 April, she was already half way through her shows.
The only reason for the podcast in its Melbourne Radio Wars format to exist now is so that they’re there when (if) something exciting happens - but that could be many months away.
The audience level is still quite high AIUI - albeit industry heavy.
It’s water cooler chat for the radio industry - not saying the analysis is always correct or timely but that’s what it has essentially turned into.
You could apply this to a lot of podcasts.
EDIT: Breaking this out into its own thread - which I meant to do months ago.