Bendigo breakfast announcer Keeshia Pettit celebrates her birthday today. She certainly wasn’t expecting the birthday gift she got this week. Yesterday she and her temporary breakfast co-host at Hit 91.1 in Bendigo found out they would only be hosting one more breakfast show before the station became a relay station for the SCA brand.
They weren’t the only ones. SCA gave notice to the hosts of 19 regional breakfast shows around Australia they were no longer needed with all of them also hosting their final shows today.
See also:
SCA to use statewide breakfast shows for Hit Network regional stations
“SCA has adapted to the challenges presented by the COVID-19 environment”
Keeshia still celebrated her birthday with her Bendigo audience today. She has worked in radio for six years and commented on getting the bad news on social media:
Redundant. Adjective: not or no longer needed or useful; superfluous. You know, at the start of the second lock down I joked “well nothing could be as bad as the first lockdown” (I had a lottttt of shit going on), but today we got news that most of hit breakfast radio shows in the country have been made redundant. Tomorrow, I’ll be turning 27 and for the first time in my life I will be unemployed. I’m not really sure what to do or how to feel with the border closed and lockdown still going on. We will be on air tomorrow. We haven’t planned a thing so please jump on air with us if you’d like to. We’ll be giving away just about everything in the office. I’m determined enough to know that this won’t be my last time turning on the mic. I’m just not sure where or what the next “mics on” will be.
Near the end of the Bendigo show this morning, the content director at SCA Bendigo Leroy Brown came on air to farewell his breakfast radio superstar, wishing her well for her next gig.
Breakfast shows around the Hit Network went out with their heads held high, explaining to their listeners “an internal restructure” meant the shows were coming to an end.
Some of the shows we listened to this morning included Josiah and Herbie booming out across the Goulburn Valley, the Coff Coast’s Hit 105.5 with Ben, Mike and Gia in the Central West of NSW at Hit 105.9, and Krysti and Bodge as they farewelled their Fake News segment. What wasn’t fake news was the farewell to their audience.
Bronte and Sam hosted their final show reaching out across the Riverina with a defiant Queen with We Are The Champions after the 7am news at Hit 93.1. Also with one less local breakfast show is Australia’s biggest inland city, Toowoomba, where Nik and Beth went out with the help of radio royalty at Hit 100.7. Jamie Dunn was a guest on their show, telling his infamous story about Jamie Angel and the missing Weetbix!
In his final break, Hit 105.5’s Ben Stevenson was philosophical about his departure, pointing out he was only one of many suffering at present: “You can’t be bitter when you are dealt a crap hand.”