Annette Sharp: Ratings loss shows Ray Hadley deserves a chance to host 2GB brekkie

By all accounts, Nine honchos are shaken by 2GB’s first breakfast radio ratings loss in 17 years, but Annette Sharp has a suggestion that might claw back the listeners.

The young Turks now running 2GB — technically too old at 43 or thereabouts to be considered “young”, yet remarkably still unbloodied by the media until now — have taken last week’s radio ratings results particularly hard.

News last Tuesday that the 2GB breakfast talk show program hosted by Ben Fordham had lost the latest and fourth ratings survey of the year to KIIS FM’s Kyle and Jackie O’s frequently smutty pop format program has triggered much soul searching at the radio station, given 2GB owner Nine can generally consider itself the arbiter of broadcast “smut” thanks to the success of hit program Married At First Sight on the company’s TV platform.

2GB breakfast host Ben Fordham lost the fourth ratings survey of the year. Picture: John Feder

It appears nailing compelling quality talk radio is a more nuanced business than nailing a drunk Instagrammer on reality TV, something that seems to have come as a surprise to Nine bosses.

The latest radio ratings survey gave the KIIS FM breakfast duo 15.5 per cent of the market over Fordham’s 13.3 share — his lowest to date — and delivered to KIIS a historic breakfast win.

It also represented 2GB’s first loss in the breakfast survey in 17 years, a result due to the success and obsessive work ethic of one man, Alan Jones, the former breakfast radio host Nine couldn’t wait to put out to pasture in May 2020, 12 months before his contract expired. It is a decision Nine may rue for years to come

Ratings winners Kyle Sandilands and Jackie O, from KIIS.

Nine Radio boss Tom Malone, Fordham and 2GB content boss Greg Byrnes were last week described by radio industry insiders as being “basket cases” and “broken men” following the release of the latest ratings.

While it may be an exaggeration, it’s clear the trio apparently hadn’t seen the ratings drop coming.

Indeed, one of them assured this writer just weeks ago that 2GB’s audience share would lift in survey four, before urging me not to make too much of a poor third survey result, a comment suggesting some inexperience in Nine’s new radio executive, which was installed in November 2019 after Nine formally took over the business from John Singleton’s Macquarie Media.

After two decades on the crest of an unbroken wave of consecutive successes and promotions, this is clearly not where best buds Fordham and Malone expected to find themselves at this time.

Tom Malone took over as Nine Radio manager in 2019. Picture: John Feder

The sun has shone consistently on the pair since the mid-nineties, when the two St Ignatius College Riverview boys graduated from high school determined to set Sydney media alight in the spirit of their old school’s motto “As much as you can do, so much dare to do”.

Fordham and Malone, both of whom still possess a boyish enthusiasm that remains to this day endearing — possibly because their careers have to date been so blessed — share an origin story that may forever link the two and either raise them together or damn them.

Radio managing director Malone makes no secret of the fact he has Fordham — and, critically, Fordham’s father John — to thank for his start in the competitive industry.

It was via the influence of Fordham Sr — the late Sydney talent agent and wine connoisseur who made his name managing the career of radio legend John Laws in the eighties and nineties before implausibly becoming an adviser and confidante to Laws’ longtime rival Alan Jones — that Malone secured a work experience spot at 2UE following his graduation from Riverview in 1997.

Alan Jones ruled the breakfast radio airwaves when he was with 2GB. Picture: John Feder

Ben Fordham had completed his own work experience stint at UE two years earlier at the tender age of 15 before taking up a role in the 2UE newsroom as a cadet reporter in about 1995.

A Walkley followed for golden boy Fordham in 1997, after which he moved briefly to Sky News — a move that coincided with Malone starting his own journalism cadetship at 2UE.

By 2000, Malone was installed as federal political correspondent at the radio station and by 2004 he was working as the producer of Mike Carlton’s radio show.

In 2006 he made the jump to Nine and the incredibly demanding role as executive producer of the Today show.

He was just 27 at the time.

Fordham had beaten him in the door at Nine in 1998 when he landed a role as a rookie TV reporter on A Current Affair and Nine News.

Stalwart 2GB broadcaster Ray Hadley deserves his shot at the breakfast program, writes Annette Sharp.

During his tenure at Today, Malone appointed Fordham sports anchor of the program in 2011, a role which marked Fordham as the natural successor to that show’s host, Karl Stefanovic, but coincided with Fordham scoring the drive radio slot on 2GB.

By 2012 Malone was basking in the glow of a new promotion after being made executive producer on 60 Minutes — an appointment that stunned the 60 Minutes’ old guard.

In 2016 the sun shone on Malone again when he was appointed Nine’s director of sport.

Fordham, meanwhile, would pull the pin on Today in 2014 due to the demands of his radio commitments, and would soon after welcome a son, Freddy, whose middle name “Thomas” would be a nod to both a grandfather and Malone.

Malone’s appointment to the helm of Nine Radio stunned many in 2019, but perhaps not Fordham. He would benefit directly when Malone was last year instructed to replace Jones at breakfast, with Fordham winning the plum role.

While no one can deny Fordham’s skills behind the mic, many 2GB loyalists would have thought morning show host Ray Hadley was a better fit, having spent 20 years being groomed to replace Jones.

This columnist certainly believes Hadley earned the right to try, and possibly fail, in the interests of retaining Jones’ audience.

It’s a question that now burns at 2GB, with Hadley holding strong in his timeslot (13.7 share despite negative marketing investment) and many aware that had 2GB been an FM station, Fordham would be in line for a tap on the shoulder.

Originally published as Annette Sharp: Ratings loss shows Ray Hadley deserves a chance to host 2GB brekkie