After most metro talk radio station breakfast shows finished for the year last Friday, the summer shows have kicked into gear from today.
In Sydney Alan Jones finished a little earlier than most with Chris Smith moving into breakfast earlier in December. During Smith’s first week he featured a memorable panel session he hosted with the stars of the new Aussie movie Swinging Safari – Guy Pearce, Julian McMahon, Jeremy Sims, Kylie Minogue, Asher Keddie and Radha Mitchell – ahead of the film’s release.
Guy Pearce and Kylie Minogue in Swinging Safari
Meanwhile Nine’s Deborah Knight has been hosting Smith’s afternoon show.
Macquarie Media’s networked east coast breakfast show on its TalkingLifestyle network wrapped last Friday with John Stanley and Garry Linnell enjoying their first weekday sleep-in today. Their final program of the year featured several cash giveaways including a prize for the inaugural Know It All of the Year with $5,000 for the winner and $2,500 for the runner-up. Taking over the show for summer are Mieke Buchan and Rob Duckworth.
Ross and John
In Melbourne Australia’s highest-rating metro radio show, 3AW’s Ross and John, folded for 2017 on Friday with the annual giveaway from Lexus of Blackburn. John Burns delivered the $65,000 vehicle to the caller judged the best of 2017 to the popular Rumour File.
Taking over the summer airwaves at breakfast are Kate Stephenson and Justin Smith.
—
Listeners to Fiveaa breakfast were winning hams last week as David Penberthy and Will Goodings hosted their last week of the show.
David Penberthy and Will Goodings
David and Will told Mediaweek their 2017 highlights included:
• Holding the Government to account over serious issues and being a catalyst for significant change in reliable electricity supply and lower power prices for South Australians, the closure of the horrible Oakden Aged Care facility, and restitution for cancer chemo bungle victims.
• The breakfast show featured exclusive interviews with Cassie Sainsbury’s mother Lisa before any other media outlet and her Colombian lawyer Orlando Herran, translated from Spanish on air by David Penberthy. The hosts told Mediaweek: “We did not pay a thin dime for either interview.”
• The hosts road-tripped across Australia with many other South Aussies to watch the Adelaide Crows in their first AFL Grand Final in two decades and they managed what other media outlets couldn’t manage – getting the Prime Minister to wear an Adelaide scarf.
• Other highlights included SA Premier Jay Weatherill filling in for David after the birth of his son Charlie and funds were raised for a number of SA charities.
Summer breakfast at Fiveaa is being hosted by Tom Rehn and Mike Smithson from today, while after December 27 through until January 19 former Fiveaa radio great Tony Pilkington will be in charge.
—
At 6PR in Perth, breakfast co-host Basil Zempilas finished a day early last Thursday. On Friday his co-host Steve Mills (both pictured below) was talking about a medical procedure Baz had undertaken. He said guesses what it had involved ranged from the big snip through to a lobotomy! However, there were also unconfirmed reports of Zempilas sighted at the airport and then later at a Queensland coastal village.
Basil Zempilas and Steve Mills
As to continuing speculation about a move to the east coast next year, Zempilas told Mediaweek on Friday:
“I will definitely be back on 6PR Breakfast next year. It will be the fifth year together for Steve and me.”
Zempilas said he and Mills were very proud of their adjusted (5am-8.30am on-air time) 11.6% breakfast share, just 0.2% behind the juggernaut show of Perth breakfast for the last 20 years, Mix 94.5.
“We’re thrilled also with four consecutive survey rises and are hopeful of a fifth on Tuesday.”
As to highlights of 2017, Zempilas said: “The cementing of our Rumour File as the most talked-about and influential segment on Perth Radio… on three separate occasions this year the Rumour File was credited in state parliament. Not to mention the scores of stories broken.”
Lisa Barnes and Geof Parry are hosting breakfast at 6PR for the next couple of weeks.