From death threats to home on Adelaide radio
Adelaide’s newest breakfast radio duo Ben Harvey and Liam Stapleton have returned home wiser and more mature — after death threats and savage abuse on the national stage.
Confidential
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Adelaide’s newest breakfast radio duo Ben Harvey and Liam Stapleton have returned home wiser and more mature after a life-changing stint on the national stage.
Harvey, 26, and Stapleton, 23, from Adelaide’s northern suburbs, will take over Nova 919’s early morning show on Monday, replacing outgoing pair Dylan Lewis and Hayley Pearson.
The former Fresh FM announcers hosted Triple J’s national breakfast show for the last three years before the lure home proved too great to ignore.
“I think a lot of people could look at us and go why would you go from speaking to potentially two million people a week on Triple J to going back to Adelaide, which a lot of people would see as a small town,” said Stapleton.
“But for us, we really do love it here and I can’t think of a better spot to build commercial skills and hone our craft.”
The young duo were forced to grow up quickly in January 2017 after their move to the national youth broadcaster in Sydney - replacing the hugely popular Matt Okine and Alex Dyson - was met with a barrage of abuse on social media and via emails and texts.
The criticism was savage and they even received death threats.
“When you’re 20 years old, you’ve moved away from home, living in a new state and you’ve literally got a nation of people absolutely slamming you and saying the most f**ked up stuff... a lot of people saying ‘kill yourself” and whatnot. The first nine months were absolutely brutal,” said Stapleton, who admitted he almost reached breaking point.
“We were getting drilled from everywhere. I didn’t know if it was ever going to stop. It had a big impact on the mental health of both of us. It was really, really tough.”
But the pair weathered the storm and eventually won over listeners. By their last radio ratings survey, Harvey and Stapleton had toppled their predecessors’ final survey result in Sydney, Brisbane, Perth, Melbourne and Adelaide.
“To be honest it made the show grow up a lot quicker. When you’re twenty-something white dudes, it’s nice to have a bit of adversity, it makes you grow up. We hadn’t really had to face a lot up until then,” Harvey said.
“Obviously it sucked that it happened but we did mature as a show and as people. After that first nine months, the show would have sounded very different.”
Reflecting on that difficult period, Stapleton said it definitely made them stronger.
“I think we were a little naive coming from Fresh, we’d got this new job, it’s all going to be sweet,” he said.
“I think because of that we’re a little wary going into this as well, we’ll probably handle things a little different this time.”
SA’s youngest commercial breakfast radio presenters, the pair has enjoyed a meteoric rise since first meeting at community station Fresh FM at the end of 2013.
“We were both volunteering there, and we also met on the standup circuit, we were both doing open mics. In the same month we saw each other at all these things and we were clearly on the same trajectory... so that’s when we started to do it together at Fresh,” said Harvey.
Stapleton added: “From the first moment we met each other we kinda knew what we wanted to do. But I think we’ve even surprised ourselves that we’ve made it happen.”
The duo began their broadcast career as Fresh breakfast hosts in 2014 and their undeniable on-air chemistry saw them headhunted by Triple J just three years later.
Now they’re back in Adelaide and excited about the challenge of commercial radio, which they see as the next logical step.
“That’s what it came down to. We’re young and it probably would have been the easy choice to stay at Triple J, it was all going well and we were enjoying it but we want to challenge ourselves and put a dent in commercial radio,” Stapleton said.
“We want to be on the scoreboard now. We’re ready to compete.”