I think you’re mistaken!
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Who recently stepped back from radio/TV to focus on the other?
Do you mean Anthony Hudson?
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that’ll be the one
Great Australian Lives, which ran for nearly nine years on 3AW, is now on SEN according to a promo I heard during live BBL tonight. The promo says the show will have a new host in Sam Edmund, and will air on 1116 SEN at 10am Sundays.
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Makes sense, this was a Crocmedia and then SEN produced show. It was previously on 3MP before they became Classic Rock 1377.
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I wish all SEN shows on the Super Radio Network would also stay on SEN.
Sportsday sounds silly following Talkin’ Sport.
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Mark Bickley and Jarrod Walsh will be the new SENSA breakfast show.
Two good appointments, Bickley is well known but Walsh is the announcer at Port Power, 36ers, Adelaide strikers, Thunderbirds and Adelaide United games. He also went to the Soccer World Cup as the Australian on air field announcer.
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Sounds like it’s being merged with their “This Is Your Sporting Life” (or more recently “This Is Your Journey”) program that the same sponsor - a local funeral director - was paying for in the SEN slot.
Now that 3AW isn’t taking Sportsday, it likely makes sense, although I can also understand it having been palatable under 3AW’s remit given the sponsor 
Fantastic. Kudos to you and all your team for making the site work, excellent to read of.
i don’t know the financials at SEN but you’ve got to wonder how they would survive on the miniscule ratings they get.
I know for them ratings are not the be all and end all - its more about demographics but tying to convince a marketing department that a * in the ratings is a good advertising choice might be an uphill battle
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All we can guess is they’re either already cashed up prior to investing, or that their digital & podcast platforms are turning over greater than the millions they’ve splashed out on destroying 4KQ, 2CH, 3AK and all the other stations around the country.
Don’t they release their annual figures to shareholders? They are publicly listed aren’t they?
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Yes
For the year ended 30 June 2022, they had revenue of $108 million, of which $86 million was advertising.
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3AK is stretching a long bow. Ratings are fairly similar if not better under SEN than they were in the dying days of 3AK. 2CH and 4KQ a different story though.
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Although there’s certainly argument though that they [as in Crocmedia/“new” SEN, to be clear] trashed the ratings of “old” SEN before they took over and put in their own folks for the 2018 radio season, although certainly some of that is just the general decline of AM too.
But let’s just say they aren’t going to be rating the mid-3s, 4s, and the occasional 5 during footy season like they used to when the likes of Bartlett, Harford et al were still on in the middle of last decade.
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Can’t let this go without also specifically calling out David Schwarz, Mark Allen and Finey. An iconic lineup on SEN circa 2015 along with Kevin Bartlett and Daniel Harford.
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There certainly felt like a push to go harder/news style, probably headlined by getting Gerard Whateley on to fill KB’s morning spot… probably another touch of C.H.'s US experience, as it tends to work over there (look at all the opinion stuff filling ESPN’s daytime, and shows like Jim Rome and so on). I’m obviously only one person but I get waaay turned off the style of the latter and would even if it’s local sport.
I actually don’t mind listening to Gerard but unfortunately all I can think of right now (as a non-southerner, to be fair) is “do I want to listen to another 3 hours of AFL 360 every morning”. Great for podcasts, sure (which current-SEN would love me saying given it’s their strategy) but probably ruins your AQH numbers because it’d be hard to listen to all of it live! There was a little less serious of a tone in the Pacific Star days with some of the other names you mentioned, and it also kinda shows why Radio Sport and SENZ are chalk-and-cheese as ways to have done sport across the ditch, certainly to an even greater extent with with NZME allowed the former to get away with.
It’s better than nothing (since I don’t consider the Sydney part-of-the-day sport options on 2KY and 2SM much better either!) but certainly missing something compared to five years ago.
Maybe it’s just a thing of, yeah the content may be good, but you need warm and listenable personalities too for talk radio. Maybe that’s what I’m missing.
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to be fair they’ve probably saved 3AK which was a dire mess 20 years ago with no money, no listeners (in 2003 it didn’t rate any higher than 1.5 and in two surveys it was on 0.7), no programming strategy, underpaying staff, and management with very short attention spans that would change presenter lineups as often as the (Melbourne) weather. If it wasn’t for SEN, 3AK would have carked it years ago.
I have no idea how SEN stacks up financially now but there must be something to justify its expenditure to date.
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It was pretty obvious that Marko and the Ox were hot enough material for Macquarie to try and grab them for MSR; just suspect it wasn’t a great decision to go national with them (unlike the north/south breakfast split they had)… at least they still have a slot on 3AW in the off-season but it feels like a graveyard slot (5pm on weekends) just to fulfil the original contract, unless they’re able to do other things within Nine now.
I didn’t mind Finey either and it seems like they tried to turn his “Final Siren” format into a webcast in the years afterward. Apparently he’s bought an upmarket deli now (that was in the news about a year ago), a bit of a change of pace.
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Their Twilight zone program normally heard at 5pm on weekends has not returned this summer. But they both have retained roles at 3AW doing segments for other shows.
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