One thing I find about Aussie station websites is that they are often not great at providing a clear, up-to-date, schedule for the full 24 hours of each day - and that’s for ‘normal’ days, never mind times like Christmas/New Year. Had you looked at the 4BC website for example, you’d have assumed the evening of Christmas Eve was Saturday Night Live followed by Country Music Countdown. 2GB’s website was no better in this respect.
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Ian Blackley is know on 6pr.
Not sure how long “Blackers “ has been there.
Nice to have him back on the wireless in Perth.
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Heard Caroline Ferguson working for the Department of Transport doing the traffic reports on 3AW this morning.
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What happened to Nine’s internal traffic reporters?
Caroline has been doing traffic reports since last Thursday, with the regular guy on holidays.
Has been missing her beautiful voice though.
They’ve taken DoT for a while now.
To each their own of course. My view is the exact opposite. Its been a punish for me up here in the glorious Harbour City copping dull and tedious 3AW overnights lately. Can’t wait till stimulating 2GB programming resumes next week. I’ll really miss callers like Beryl from Sunshine and Mavis from Moonee Ponds … not. 3AW programming overnights has certainly cured my insomnia anyway.
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All of which confirms my (and many others) long-held view that the Sydney radio audience is very different from the Melbourne radio audience and that is why program-sharing between the 2 cities rarely works. Michael McLaren lasted 3 months being simulcast on 3AW before they had to bring back local overnights to the station
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Steve Price and then later John Stanley lasted 2-3 years on 3AW before Nine Management stepped in and brought back local nights when Denis Walter moved from afternoons.
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Let’s not forget MTR 1377AM… aka 3GB.
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The CBC experiment between 2UE and 3AK pretty much confirmed this. And even later attempts to relay the John Laws show into Melbourne fell flat.
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Sydney likes tabloid screaming, Melbourne likes more serious newsy shows and then light talk like Walter/Nightline at night.
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There are some situations where I think national programming could be used to save costs. For example, there’s not much point in having two separate gardening shows on Saturday and Sunday morning (The Garden Clinic on 2GB/4BC, and on 3AW there are different gardeners who join Darren James each week).
If Michael McLaren doesn’t want to return to Overnights and is instead given the Weekend slot that Chris Smith used to occupy, for example, then I wouldn’t be surprised if they trial having Tony Moclair’s 3AW Overnight program heard on 2GB and 4BC permanently. If they tightened up the 3AW format then I think a national overnight show from Melbourne could possibly work.
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What is the point of having 2 Australia Overnight programs. 1 coming from 2gb/4bc and another one coming from 3aw
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Different climates and soils would make it really obvious that it’s out of state, so would mean you’d have to be a whole lot less specific in advice, making it a less useful program.
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I see your point here. On one side, Triple M’s Night Shift seems to (sort of) work for a national audience, so why can’t Nine Radio’s programming.
Then again, traditionally 3AW have done their own thing - and even during the Fairfax/Southern Cross era, would 3AW rarely share content north of the border.
2UE (and then 2GB) have always had a strong content-sharing relationship with 4BC. Their more common love for similar sporting codes, etc. makes it easier for announcers to relate to a NSW and QLD audience at the same time.
In saying that, I can understand that during the summer period it’s harder to generate as much local content - so networking across all markets would be the easier option.
But for the remainder of the year, I quite like it that 3AW shares with FiveAA, and 2GB shares with 4BC.
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Presumably because Nine have realised from experience that the expectations of the overnight Melbourne audience are very different from those of the overnight Sydney audience. False economy in the long-term to broadcast a program that your listeners don’t like. I doubt the cost of a separate 3AW overnight show affects Nine’s bottom line
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But for summertime non-ratings period, would anyone at Nine really care?
and let’s not forget Sharina the psychic’s 2UE show was networked to 3AW one September night in 2002, lasted no longer than 2 hours until 3AW management ordered to “get this piece of s#!t off the air!” it did not go down too well with a Melbourne audience.
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That’s on Sharina to be fair. She should have seen that coming.
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