Found an old aircheck of Triple M Sydney’s ‘Club Veg’ breakfast show from December 1992 online (PM me for the details if you want to hear it’; it’s password protected). They played this tune which I have honest-to-goodness not heard since 1992:
I only remembered one lyric from the song and it’s been bugging me for years. Not available on streaming services either.
Aaahhh Club Veg. Thanks for posting dxnerd. Such a creative duo Mal & Vic. They were on 2MMM nights then took over Breakfast when the legend Doug Mulray left. After that I think they left Sydney for Triple M Perth for a couple of years before coming home to Sydney. Back in the days when the MMMs had true creative brilliance. What a powerhouse radio network they were back then … unlike today sadly. Also special mention … RIP Vic Davies you genius.
Some of the songs played were interesting to say the least. Wendy Matthews- ‘The Day You Went Away’ being the most ‘WTF’. I do recall there being a time when the Ms flirted with pop; perhaps this was it.
Club Veg were on in the afternoons by the early 2000s; I sometimes listened.
I remember in 1990-91 hearing Mariah Carey’s “Vision Of Love” and Amy Grant’s “Baby Baby” played on MMM Melbourne. They were on light rotation.
What about the crazy move Triple M Sydney made in late 2008 when they tried “Music that Rocks”
Triple M started playing Top
40, pop and dance music with a splattering of rock music to try and attract younger listeners from Nova,
I remember them playing Don’t Hold Back by the Potbelleez on high rotation, a dance track on Triple M!!! It was a massive ratings failure for that time. I think Triple M rates lower now under the inept hands of SCA.
Actually, 2MMM rated worse back then than it does now. In S2/2009, it got to as low as 3.2%, just below that of ABC Classic FM (as it as known then). It was also beaten by Vega (now Smooth), which had 4.7% that survey. 2Day was the #1 FM station with 10.3%.
Out of interest what did Nova 969 rate then as Triple M was targeting Nova then?
I’m old enough to remember this forum’s reaction to ‘Music That Rocks’ - fair to say it wasn’t well received here either. They basically scapped all the Oils and Chisel (or just about anything released before 1990) and went with a very liberal definition of rock - think Potbelleez and you said, loads of MGMT and the like as well. It failed miserably as it drove the older listeners over to Gold but failed to attract the younger ones from Nova, and from memory it was inside a year before they started adding the old stuff back in.
If I also recall the undoing of ‘Music That Rocks’ also involved bringing Eddie back (at least for Melbourne) and creating The Hot Breakfast, which went on to be a successful breakfast show that led the improved format. Would that timing be about right?
Also the problem with Music that Rocks was their sister station 2day fm was also playing lots of Potbelleez and MGMT at that time too.
2day and Triple M’s formats were so similar to each other it was like they were two stations owned by separate companies competing for the same audience, Wave fm v i98.
Yep, presicely. Despite the fact that they had the two stations covering the market perfectly in that 2Day/Fox looked after the younger females and Triple M the older males, they saw the need to change. Admittedly that era felt a bit like rock as a genre was starting to fade, so maybe they didn’t want to get stuck behind the times? Either way, it seemed a poor decision at the time and was proven to be as ratings declined rapidly.
Ironically, today there’s a bit of overlap with 2MMM and 2Day now that 2Day is playing a lot more 80s.
I vaguely remember ‘Music That Schlocks’ but had stopped listening to the Ms even by that point. That was probably around the time that P!nk started getting regular rotation on ‘rock’ stations (not just Triple M, B-Rock as well).
But even before that point, stuff like Eminem would get a run in the ‘Jack FM’ era (2005/06). Ironically there was a sweeper in the early 2000s (from memory) which proudly proclaimed ‘no rap crap’ on the station.
Was that the “No Rap, No Techno, and No Weird Stuff” sweeper? I think that was early 2000s under the “Sydney’s Best Rock” positioner.
2BL (now ABC Radio Sydney) Program Guide for 1996.
What year did the ABC decide to stop using their call signs on air? I remember my parents growing up used to listen to 666 2CN in Canberra. When did it change to 666 ABC Canberra or 702 ABC Sydney? It was in the mid 90s just wondering what year. If I remember correctly it was a network wide change.
The change happened at around the end of 1999.
20-something years on and I still know people who refer to it as 3LO
it was stupid to ditch the callsigns, in the past each state’s local ABC had its own identity, but just like commercial outlets like SCA (Hit, Triple M) and ARN (KIIS & Gold, etc) they seemed intent to flush out any form of individuality and have a homogenised one-size-fits-all brand for everywhere. I suppose it’s cheaper that way but it’s very bland.
Yeah that’s true, Triple M had lost the rock years earlier than that, and had become a more generic adult music station with a slight rock tinge. That made the change to ‘Music That Rocks’ all the much more jarring at the time. They really had a five year period where it all ran off the rails, before defaulting to a more traditional ‘Rock, Sport and Comedy’ format in around 2009(?)
When you think about it Triple M has been all over the place since the 90s. They seem to have tried everything except the most obvious thing - broad classic rock which occasionally stray into new rock and classic hits territory. Many North American rock stations are now running very successful classic rock formats that rate well in most markets. Stations like Q107 Toronto, The Drive in Chicago, and Rock 101 in Vancouver. These stations have ratings Triple M would be very happy to have in markets like Sydney and Melbourne. Even stations like K-Earth and KOLA in Los Angeles are 80s and 90s-heavy classic hits which tend towards rock. Look at Brisbane, without a proper classic hits station on FM you have an AM station like 4KQ beating Triple M. Imagine if you had FM104 which was a bit like a combo of K-Earth and Q107 with some newer rock-skewed hits… It would top the ratings.