Introducing the new (and old) faces gracing Adelaide TV screens and radio airwaves in 2023
‘Tis the season for a shake-up on Adelaide’s radio and TV scene. Who’s gone? Who’s coming back? And who are the new faces? Here are all the ins and outs.
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A new year always brings a raft of changes in Adelaide’s sink-or-swim world of radio and television. Here’s who will be diving in at the start of 2023 in the hope of making a huge splash in the ratings.
MIX AND MATCH
Radio is gaga for comebacks.
At the start of 2022 former ABC Adelaide breakfast presenter Ali Clarke made her much-anticipated return to the commercial airwaves.
After announcing she was leaving Aunty to – everyone always says it! – spend more time with her family, she had suddenly been presented with her own brekkie show on Mix 102.3.
The Ali Clarke Breakfast Show team also included its namesake’s ABC sidekick, funnyman Eddie Bannon, and AFLW star Erin Phillips.
As time went on, we heard less and less of Phillips, and Mix spent more and more money on promoting the show – an estimated $100,000-plus in three months alone – in a bid to lift its poor ratings.
Mix didn’t get much bang for its buck – at the end of the year the show was fizzling in fifth spot, despite a 0.7 rise to 9.0 share points.
But Clarke will definitely be back in 2023, with Bannon and Shane Lowe.
The Ali Clarke Breakfast Show’s new line-up will also include Channel 10 sport reporter Max Burford, who has a connection to what is shaping up to be one of the biggest comebacks in Adelaide radio …
SUPER NOVA
When Jodie Oddy made a shock exit from Mix 102.3 in late 2020 after 13 years with the FM station, no one was giving any explanation – which is typically how radio works. Funny that. But Oddy – who also has a TV news reporting gig with Network 10 – is getting the last laugh.
After making guest appearances on Nova 919’s Ben & Liam brekkie program, in August 2021 she was given her own show on Saturday mornings, The Jodie Oddy Show, with two of her Ten colleagues, Max Burford and Tiffany Warne.
A little over 12 months later, Nova announced Oddy would be co-hosting its weekday breakfast show in 2023.
Her on-air partner will be Andrew Hayes – a former SEN breakfast co-host with Kane Cornes, Seven sports reporter and ex-Central District footy player.
Speaking of SEN, its new brekkie team is expected to be announced any day now.
Mark Bickley is the hot tip to fill one of the seats vacated by Hayes and Kane Cornes.
As to who might fill the other – that is anyone’s guess.
Meanwhile, the drafting of Hayes to Nova, no doubt, came as a huge surprise to those who were expecting Oddy to reunite with for her former Mix brekkie co-host Mark “Soda” Soderstrom …
MAKING HIS MARK … AND BACK FOR MORSE
Silent on the breakfast radio airwaves in 2022, Mark “Soda” Soderstrom still had his telly gig as 7NEWS Adelaide’s sports presenter. That said, the rumour mill was also working overtime. Those in the know said he had grand plans for a brekkie radio comeback.
By year’s end it was locked in; Soda was going to be joining SAFM in 2023 to co-host its brekkie show alongside Rebecca “Bec” Morse. News of his impending arrival came not long after the departure of Andrew “Cosi” Costello and word that Anthony “Lehmo” Lehman would not return in 2023.
BTW, what is it with radio announcers always having to abbreviate their first or last name? Nova’s Ben Harvey and Liam Stapleton don’t and they’re doing okay …
HAVING IT BOTH WAYS
We knew something was up with Nova’s Ben & Liam show in mid October; the buzz in radio land was that they had both listed their Adelaide homes for sale. By the end of that month it was revealed that they would be replacing Nova Melbourne’s outgoing breakfast team – Chrissie Swan, Jonathan Brown and Sam Pang – in 2023.
But they won’t be a duo. Long-time producer Belle Jackson will be joining them.
The Ben, Liam and Belle show will be heard from 6-9am in Melbourne, with a prerecorded one-hour Adelaide-only show on air here, obviously, from 6-7am.
So, they are leaving, but also (sort of) staying.
AND THEN THERE’S …
Let’s give a special shout out to Kelly Golding, whose voice and face are familiar to local radio and TV audiences. Golding recently signed on as the host of digital radio SmoothFM’s breakfast offering, the More Music Breakfast Show. She will be back at the station, which plays “feel good” music and is owned by Nova Entertainment, in 2023.
Taking it in turns to take out the No. 1 spot in the breakfast radio ratings, two duos – FIVEaa’s David Penberthy and Will Goodings and ABC Adelaide’s Stacey Lee and Nikolai Beilharz – are staying put in 2023.
FYI, Penbo and Will finished the year in top spot with 16.5 share points (up 1.3), while Aunty’s duo came runner-up with 13.6 (up 0.8).
In third place in the final survey with 11.2 (up 0.4), Triple M’s brekkie trio Mark Ricciuto, Chris Dittmar and Laura O’Callaghan will also be back in 2023.
Of course, the same cannot be said for FIVEaa stalwart, mornings presenter Leon Byner who said farewell to his listeners for the last time in early December.
Byner, 74, was choking back tears as he told fans he’d had “23 great years” at the station.
And, in what has to be one of the worst kept secrets in the industry, another of the station’s longtime announcers, Matthew Pantelis, will be in the hot seat come 2023.
Meanwhile, former Adelaide Confidential columnist Leith Forrest will take over from Pantelis to host the evenings timeslot.
Byner’s departure was the Adelaide media scene’s retirement of the year. Well, almost …
QUEEN OF THE SMALL SCREEN
Switch on the gogglebox in 2023 and Jane Doyle will be conspicuous by her absence. That’s right, Adelaide’s queen of news has retired.
In 1989 Doyle moved to Channel 7 after four years with ABC TV in Adelaide.
Do the math and you’ll find she clocked up no less than 33 years behind Seven’s local newsdesk.
And, as was the case with Byner, Doyle’s replacement, or rather, replacements, were not difficult to guess.
Her successors, Rosanna Mangiarelli and Will Goodings have been reading the weekend news together since late September, with those in the picture saying the two were being primed to take over from Doyle.
10 OUT OF 10 FOR EFFORT?
The other big news in TV news is that Channel 10 is making its Adelaide bulletin more local. Well, as much as it can be when its newsreader is interstate.
When Ten (in) famously pulled the plug on broadcasting the local news bulletin out of its Adelaide headquarters industry folk and viewers were shaking their heads. For two years it was beamed out of Ten’s Melbourne HQ, with the bulletin’s hosts including Jennifer Keyte, who Gen X and older will remember as the newsreader on Tonight Live with Steve Vizard back in the early 1990s.
Come 2023, it will be broadcast from Sydney. The new newsreader will be none other than Adelaide’s own Kate Freebairn, who will be back from a year’s maternity leave. Freebairn was previously the weather presenter. That role is now being filled by Tiffany Warne, who was on Nova’s The Jodie Oddy Show.
Speaking of, so was Channel 10 Adelaide’s sports presenter for 2023, namely Max Burford.- who will also be heard on The Ali Clarke Breakfast Show on Mix (which, BTW, finished the year as Adelaide’s No. 1 station overall with 11.8 share points).
Talk about a tangled web! Can’t keep up? Stick with The Advertiser for all the radio and TV goss in 2023, because there’s no flies on us!
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