The Christmas break is especially welcome for many this year as another massive year full of lockdowns, vaccines, and border closures comes to an end. Keeping Nova listeners company over the holidays will be Ben Harvey and Liam Stapleton, who will be heard nationally across Australia as hosts of Summer Breakfast with Ben & Liam.
Mediaweek spoke to Harvey and Stapleton about what the last year has looked like and what comes next.
As 2021 wraps up, looking back proves what a big year it’s been for the Ben & Liam show.
Harvey: “We spent five days in a box in Rundle Mall, we did a show from a billboard, we kayaked to Kangaroo Island, we’ve published a kid’s book. This has been our biggest year of radio to date, which is nice.”
Stapleton: “It’s also a credit to our team around us. We have a lot of dumb ideas, but it’s been sweet at Nova because we’ve got such an incredible team. We’ve got some great producers as well as Macey Gibbs and Jordan Marshall who work in promotions – Jordan actually just scored the ACRA! You’re only as good as the team around you, that’s for sure.”
Nick Marwe (executive producer aka Wolf), Lachland Copeland (audio producer), Harvey and Stapleton, Cam Doyle (digital content producer), Taylee Jones (newsreader) and Bottom (L-R) – Belle Jackson (producer), Macey Gibbs (promotions project manager)
Herbert The Dancing Horse
Harvey and Stapleton crossed ‘becoming children’s book authors’ off the bucket list this year with Herbert The Dancing Horse. Written with the kids of Adelaide, all the profits raised from the book are going to Variety.
Harvey: “We thought if we got the kids of Adelaide to write it for us, it would be very cheap labour and then we could reap all the profits!”
Stapleton: “It started because Ben was pointing out how annoying it is that every single person has a kids book now. To be fair, it’s probably because there’s a lot of people in the entertainment industry who haven’t been able to go out and make coin from stand up and those other means that they usually would. We talked about it for two months and wrote it in 15 minutes, but we genuinely got all the ideas from kids calling up. We had some little writer’s room sessions with kids, and they were throwing out all sorts of crazy things – one kid gave us a character of this evil vacuum cleaner man. I still don’t really understand it, it doesn’t really fit into the book, but we wrote it in there anyway. So that’s been a really fun experience.”
Summer Breakfast
Jumping behind the mic for a national audience, Harvey and Stapleton are excited to tackle Summer Breakfast for a second year.
Harvey: “Last time we jumped out of a plane, we did the show broadcasting from 16,000 feet freefall – I think we might have gone a little extra last time.”
Stapleton: “This time we might just chill out and maybe do some talk back and tell some stories, normal radio stuff.
“We’ve also got a few guests lined up as well, we’re going to be speaking to Paul Rudd – he’s a bit of an A-Lister so that’s different for us.”
Harvey: “People always say congratulations on breakfast which is really lovely, but in reality we’re just the chumps that have to work extra two weeks, but we’re looking forward to it!”
With a bigger audience for the pair comes a bigger pool of potential content.
Stapleton: “When you’re talking to Adelaide you’re talking to a certain number of people, but when you add all those extra states in, there are so many more juicy calls coming through. The bar raises because you’ve got more stories to choose from, and you’re only putting the best of the best out. It definitely makes it a little more competitive and exciting for us on air, that’s for sure.”
Looking Ahead
With 2022 on the horizon, Harvey and Stapleton are working on competing with themselves.
Stapleton: “You always want to just be outdoing yourself. There were a lot of exciting things that we managed to do this year that weren’t necessarily on a whiteboard at the start of the year, so I think we’ll just be continuing to be creative and trying and outdo ourselves, and do new and exciting things that hopefully stand out a little bit to the audience.”
There is one idea in particular that the pair are hoping to get off the ground – eventually.
Harvey: “There’s been a lot of talk this year about a lot of famous rich people going to space, and Liam and I definitely threw the idea out there – can we be the first radio show to broadcast from space?”
Stapleton: “Kudos to our program director Ben Latimer for actually pitching that to Paul Jackson.”
Harvey: “He actually went to the big boss with the idea. He laughed him out of the building, but we will persist!”
Stapleton: “This is an embargoed idea! It’s embargoed until we do it!”
Harvey and Stapleton with Ben Latimer
Nova’s Summer Breakfast with Ben & Liam can be heard across the country from 6am to 9am AEST weekdays, from Monday 6 December to Friday 17 December.