Power players: Brisbane’s highest-earning TV and radio stars
From former footy stars and Olympians to WAGS, stand-up comedians, teen TV stars and journalists, these are the power players of Brisbane’s TV and radio industry. SEE THE LIST
Confidential
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There’s no business like show business.
Big ticket deals south of the border have always been a hot topic of conversation – Sydney’s national television industry is historically known among the inner circle as “millionaire’s row” because of their lofty pay deals.
But Brisbane’s comparatively smaller, and less lucrative, market often flies under the radar, with deals closely guarded and not typically discussed between colleagues.
Networks and radio stations also can’t disclose or comment on the confidential deals.
Brisbane’s pool of presenters is an established group of longstanding media veterans, many of whom have worked their way to the big smoke and held their positions for more than a decade.
It’s hotly competitive and ratings are paramount and hardfought – and there’s a reason for it.
In the breakfast radio world, a competitive market between the big four FM stations, deals, which are typically one to three years, are rumoured to range between $200,000 and a rare $500,000 sum.
It is also common for contracts to include bonuses when the show wins the ratings.
In the television newsrooms on Mt Coot-tha some news anchors are rumoured to be on comparatively smaller figures of around $150,000 to $200,000, while veteran anchors are tipped to be on considerably higher sums.
They are said to benefit from what’s called “old money” with deals etched in the glory days of TV news.
While presenters often appear at events around town, those appearances are commonly part of their contracts with the network.
Some talent who came in with lucrative jobs before media, such as athletes turned sport readers, are also rumoured to be on top-earning salaries, negotiated on their behalf by their well-equipped agents.
It is a big leap from the small salaries that most start out on in the industry.
As a result, competition becomes fierce in the small town where the numbers of those top-earning positions is tightly held.
With beginnings in reality TV and sport as well as long-time industry hustlers, here’s a look at the current top-rating Queensland TV and radio hosts and how they got there.
TELEVISION
The longstanding rivalry between Seven and Nine for the 6pm timeslot has only intensified in recent years, with Ten scrapping their local bulletin.
The pair have traded blows for decades and while Seven is currently on top, the margin is slim, and the networks recently negotiated a truce over their taxing live coverage of the Brisbane floods – neither willing to be the first to pull the pin.
In March, Seven News averaged a Brisbane audience of 180,000 on weekdays and 160,750 on weekends. In comparison, Nine News averaged 178,609 on weekdays and 154,875 on weekends.
NINE NEWS QUEENSLAND
MELISSA DOWNES
Downes is a force in Queensland television news, having fronted Nine’s weekday bulletin since 2008.
She trialled different career paths after finishing high school in Brisbane – Somerville House – including modelling in Sydney before settling on journalism.
It was during her final year of an Arts Journalism degree at the University of Queensland that she interned with Seven News Brisbane and subsequently landed a job, cutting her teeth as a reporter for seven years.
She made the switch to Nine in 2001, became a fill-in presenter for the weekend bulletins – a common stepping stone to the top job – before replacing Heather Foord in 2008 alongside Bruce Paige.
Andrew Lofthouse joined the following year and together they’ve formed a decade-long partnership on the newsdesk.
Nine had been struggling in the ratings at the time but had a resurgence in the years after she arrived.
When Nine News took out the title of the most-watched news bulletin in 2017 in Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane, Downes said: “There is pressure from a business perspective. But from our perspective as journalists … it’s an indication of us doing things right.”
Continuing to speak of the pressures of the front-facing role, she said at the time: “Once I decided to cut my hair and someone in senior management said to me, ‘You have just ruined your career now’. I am quite pleased to say, it didn’t ruin my career.”
“In TV you have to learn to have a thick skin.”
ANDREW LOFTHOUSE
Lofthouse joined Nine as a weekend presenter and moved to weekdays when Paige retired shortly after – but he was by no means an industry newcomer.
He’d had a varied career life before taking on the news anchor role.
He helped found ‘80s Brisbane band Lets Go Naked – of which he’s still a member – and also spent time as a teacher.
He got his media start in community radio on the Gold Coast and joined the ABC in 1990, spending eleven years in the radio world before transitioning to television as a presenter of ABC’s weeknight bulletin for six years from 2003, working on stories for programs including Stateline and Australian Story during his time with the broadcaster.
He’s formed a strong partnership with Downes since switching to the more lucrative Nine Network and now commutes daily from his home on the Sunshine Coast.
WALLY LEWIS
After an illustrious career in rugby league, as captain of Queensland and Australia, Lewis joined Nine News Queensland in 1999 as sports presenter – with the network hoping to capitalise on the popularity of “The King”, who would also commentate on the game.
After his retirement from rugby league he briefly became a sports presenter on Seven before switching to Nine, but, a butcher by trade, he didn’t have much experience behind the desk.
“When I first started, I remember saying something along the lines of ‘I’m not Einstein and I have played rugby league all my life and most people believe we aren’t the smartest operators’,” he said when he celebrated 20 years with Nine in 2019.
“It was a big learning curve.”
Nine supported Lewis, who had epilepsy, when in 2007 he had life-changing brain surgery after suffering two seizures in the newsroom, which threatened to destroy his media career.
He was welcomed back in the wake of the successful procedure.
Lewis is exclusively managed by The Fordham Company and in late 2019 worked with late celebrity agent John Fordham to lock in a new deal that secured his position until the end of 2022.
SEVEN NEWS
SHARYN GHIDELLA
Seven’s beloved leading lady experienced the true turbulence of the national news industry.
She was born in Babinda, in Far North Queensland, and was a boarder at St Patrick’s College in Townsville before she got her start as a reporter and presenter in the Cairns bureau for North Queensland Television.
“No one would ever have thought that that quiet, shy girl from Babinda would one day become a journalist and sit in front of a camera,” she once said.
She studied business communications at QUT and landed a job with Ten’s news division in Brisbane before switching to Nine, where she hustled for 15 years.
In 1997 she presented Daybreak, Channel 9’s early morning news bulletin and the 6pm news on Saturday night, and also read the in-flight news service for Qantas.
She was a substitute host on Today, filling in for Tracy Grimshaw, and then a permanent news presenter, before she was replaced by Leila McKinnon and moved to co-host National Nine Early News. She returned to Today by 2005.
After many years of musical chairs, she left Nine in 2006 and, pregnant with her first child, agreed to return to Brisbane to read the weekend news for Seven.
She moved to Weekend Sunrise before, in early 2013, she began presenting Seven News Brisbane with Bill McDonald and also Today Tonight Queensland, which was axed the following year.
She has remained a stalwart for the network ever since.
“When I started in the industry turning 40 or getting older kind of meant death in TV terms, there weren’t a lot of older women on television at all,” she once said.
“I don’t think women and men should have a use-by date just based on how they look or what their age is. It should be about how you present the news and I think people are much more accepting of older people on television now.”
MAX FUTCHER
After Bill McDonald left Seven, reportedly following protracted contracted negotiations, the network looked to senior reporter Futcher.
He was a Brisbane local, having gone to school in Albany Creek before carving out an impressive journalism career.
He had worked as a 10 News First reporter and relief newsreader Ten, and as a WIN News reporter before joining Seven.
He had covered four Olympic Games, reported on Nelson Mandela’s death and funeral, David Hicks’ trial in Guantanamo Bay and famine on the Horn of Africa.
In 2006 he won a UN Peace Award for his reporting on violence in East Timor, and in 2015 he added a Clarion award for his coverage of the Bali 9 executions.
Yet he was surprised to be given the co-anchor role in 2018.
“I didn’t see it coming,” he said.
“These jobs don’t come up very often, so when they do, you’ve got to grab them and it’s really exciting.”
SHANE WEBCKE
The Brisbane Broncos’ great’s 2006 premiership victory had barely subsided when he was snapped up by Seven for a media career.
As a well-liked and eloquent Queensland NRL star, the move into media, albeit reluctant, was considered a coup.
After the premiership win in September, he was on screen for Seven by January, joining the sports team, with guest spots on Sportsworld and Sunrise as well as The Great South East and Queenslander Weekender.
“I have an interest to do other things and to sit in front of a camera and commentate was never something I wanted to do,’’ he told The Sunday Mail at the time.
But his career has flourished, reading sport for Seven four nights a week, commuting from his family farm in Toowoomba.
PAT WELSH
A prominent member of Seven’s glory days, Welsh joined the networks as a sports presenter in 1975.
He has become one of Australia’s top sports journalists, commentators and editors since then, proving immovable from the position and is a prominent voice among Queensland households.
KENDALL GILDING
Gilding immediately captured attention when she worked in the Channel 7 newsroom on the Gold Coast.
She’d moved from her hometown of Cairns, where she’d begun her tenure with Seven in 2011.
She picked up a guest newsreading gig on Weekend Sunrise at just 25 after impressing executive producer Michael Pell in 2015 and was hand-picked to launch the network’s 4pm bulletin in Brisbane shortly after.
“I remember being at home in Cairns at 14 watching Sunrise and deciding that is what I want to do,” she said at the time.
“It is very humbling to have been given this opportunity.”
She represents the network as a host and guest at a number of events around Queensland.
READ MORE: Kendall Gilding shares pregnancy miracle after fertility struggle
RADIO
The ‘big four’ FM stations, filled with presenters who have held onto their chairs for a decade amid the fickle industry, have traded blows in the past and have all seen their days atop the Brisbane breakfast radio ranks.
Nova has been the consistent ratings winner in recent years – although toppled by ABC Brisbane and B105 in the recent survey – but contract negotiations, often tied to ratings results, continue to kick up dust in the market.
NOVA
DAVID LUTTERAL
With a background in sport, Luttsy was invited to join the founding breakfast show at Nova 106.9 in 2004 as the “sports guy”. But he quickly became in an integral part of the show alongside Ash Bradnam, Kip Wightman and Meshel Laurie.
He was also board member of The Queensland Academy of Sport and a brand ambassador for companies including XXXX and Audi as well as a go-to host for sporting events around Brisbane an the Gold Coast.
ASH BRADNAM
Bradman, who went to school on the Gold Coast, also had a varied career before founding the Nova show while the Brisbane studio was still being built back in 2004.
He had a background in sports reporting and in 2000 he wrote, produced and acted in a comedy short file, Whaleboat.
He has been a part of Nova ever since and also hosts a podcast called Addicted after his own battle with alcohol addiction.
This year he sold his waterside Gold Coast home for $3 million.
SUSIE O’NEILL
The eight-time Olympic swimming champion was shy during her sport career and was petrified of interviews.
Due to her likability as “Madame Butterfly” she was convinced by Nova’s then boss to start at Nova in 2013 as a fill-in sports reader.
She resisted accepting an expanded role until 2019 when she joined the program as co-host, five days a week, alongside long-running trio Ash, Kip and Luttsy.
By the end of 2021 the breakfast show had won 16 out of a total 21 radio surveys since she joined full time.
“Quite a few times I’d be like ‘I don’t want to do it anymore’, but they keep talking me around to keep going and I have less and less of those moments,” she said in 2020.
In 2020 she sold her riverfront family home of 19 years at auction for $3.055 million.
B105
ABBY COLEMAN
Raised in Adelaide, Coleman finished runner-up on the first season of the Australian version of The Mole when she was just 18.
She then found herself on a number of TV shows, including presenting Couch Potato and filling in as weather presenter on the Nine Network’s Weekend Today.
She moved back to study in Adelaide in 2007 and began her radio career presenting in the afternoons on SAFM before a brief stint in Sydney filling in on national program The Hot30 Countdown.
In 2011, she moved to Brisbane and joined B105 to host the breakfast show alongside Stav Davidson, who she has since presenting with on air for more than a decade, sharing all facets of her life as a mother of three.
“When I first started working in radio, I was told, ‘You’re a girl about town’ and they tried to paint me as this person. I don’t know if I was confident enough to be entirely who I was,” she said last year.
“I remember telling a PR person that eating disorders was a topic I was really passionate about. The response was that it wasn’t a really attractive thing to share, so we might not put that on the radio.
“I remember thinking, ‘What? I’m not a girl about town. I like V8s and I love my footy. That’s who I am’.
“Now, I enjoy radio so much more because we just don’t have those conditions put on us.”
Coleman is also a sought-after host for events around Brisbane and was a regular guest on Channel 10’s Have You Been Paying Attention?
STAV DAVIDSON
He’s now notched up 15 years in the competitive breakfast radio market in Brisbane, having started his career completely serendipitously.
Despite having no experience as a comedian, he entered the Raw Comedy Competition in 2000 and made the finals, facing an audience of 1500 within four weeks of his first time on stage.
While continuing his focus on stand up comedy, he was running a coffee shop on the side and admittedly struggling with a drug addiction, which he overcame and has been open about on air since.
He was approached to try his microphone skills in the studio for B105 and made an impression, landing himself a spot on breakfast radio, where he has remained ever since.
MATT ACTON
Acton fell in love with radio at his school station in Gladstone and Sea FM took him on as a work experience student in his final two years of high school.
“I just loved it — I was like, ‘You pay people to talk s--- and be a smartass? Well I think I could possibly do this’,” Acton once recalled.
He persistently sent recordings to the boss each week and landed a radio job in Toowoomba when he was 18.
From there, he continued to hustle up the ranks, shifting from the Sunshine Coast to the Gold Coast and then Sydney’s 2Day FM where he hosted The Hot 30, worked in television and filled in for Kyle Sandilands alongside Jackie O.
He then worked in drive with Kate Langbroek and comedian Dave Hughes in Melbourne for two years and was on the verge of inking another deal with them when he got the call to join B105.
His wife was pregnant and the lure home to Queensland was enough for him to take the deal and start with the breakfast show in early 2017.
KIIS 97.3FM
ROBIN BAILEY
Bailey is somewhat of the voice of Brisbane radio because of her credentials in the field.
She began her career as a journalist in Sydney and her career spanned across all major capital cities. She hosted a children’s show, weather om TasTv and has been a regular TV news guest.
She spent nine years with Jamie Dunn and Ian Skippen on the B105 Morning Crew, dominating the Brisbane market during the 1990s and early 2000s.
She then hosted 97.3 for a decade with Terry Hansen and Bob Gallagher before contract negotiations turned sour and she was axed from the network.
She jumped ship to launch a new breakfast show on rivals Triple M before a struggling 97.3 reinstated Bailey in early 2020 in a bid to boost their ratings.
The ratings have ebbed and flowed but have been recently solid for the network.
“It’s the place I feel the most comfortable, the place where I feel most connected,” she has said of radio.
She says the adage in commercial radio is that it takes 18 months to two years to build a breakfast team in the ratings.
TERRY HANSEN
Hansen’s career as a stand up comedian is a familiar route into radio.
He is a veteran comic, having been a compere at all of the Sydney Comedy Stores and once invited to the London Comedy Store 10th Anniversary Best New Comic competition.
He has been the resident funnyman on 97.3 for around 15 years despite a brief break in 2018 due to fatigue.
He returned to the network when Bailey was also reinstated in 2020.
KIP WIGHTMAN
Wightman moved to Brisbane from Adelaide when he was eight, but shifted to Perth when he was 16 to finish school.
He landed his first radio job in Karratha in WA’s north in 1994 before spending four years in Perth as a late-night announcer.
After a period in Sydney, where he first signed with Nova, it was a welcome homecoming to Brisbane, where he began the breakfast show in 2005 with Bradnam, Lutteral and Laurie.
He briefly left the show in 2009 before returning in 2012 and presenting again with Bradnam and Lutteral before O’Neill joined the team full time in 2019.
They had dominated the ratings in that time, barely dropping a survey, with Nova itself consistently the most listened-to station in Brisbane.
But with his three-year deal up for negotiation, a disgruntled Wightman resigned last October, accepting a pay cut to move to 97.3 this year. He negotiated for bonuses if they win the ratings, which was also part of the Nova deal.
“That was something for me, I want to be incentivised because I’m here to hopefully take us to No. 1 and stay there,” he said recently. “I like that challenge – If we don’t succeed then we don’t get paid as well.”
TRIPLE M
GREG ‘MARTO’ MARTIN
A former rugby union star, Martin played for the Queensland Reds and earned nine caps for the Wallabies in 1989 and 1990 before retiring from the game in 1992.
A character on the field, he began working part-time on Fox Sports while also starting his own building company and fell into broadcasting by chance when he renovated the home of then Triple M breakfast host Dean Miller.
“He used to often bring beer home for us — light beer of course — and we’d have a yarn,” Martin once said.
The pair hatched a plan over a few of those beers to begin a rugby union segment and Martin subsequently landed a job as co-host for Blood, Sweat and Beers. By the end of 2001 Martin was recruited for the breakfast show, presenting with Lisa Sheehan and cricketer Greg “Fatcat” Ritchie, and soon after wound up his building company to make room for his media commitments.
“Somehow, they offered me a wonderful chance to do this instead of building,’’ he said at the time. “So far, so good, but I haven’t sold the ute, just in case anything goes wrong.’’
Martin is still the co-host of Triple M’s The Big Breakfast. He’s sat beside a revolving chair of comedians and broadcasters but has been a consistent voice at the station ever since.
MARGAUX PARKER
When Bailey signed off from Triple M in late 2019, Parker was ushered in as her replacement in the coveted brekkie radio gig, instantly signing a two-year deal.
The wife of rugby league legend Corey Parker and mum of four made the shift from Gold Coast drive show with Luke Bradman, The Rush Hour on Gold 92.5.
“In radio speak they call it being green, but I’m just embracing it,” Parker said at the time. “I don’t have a long history of radio schooling or background and I am still figuring out who I am as a radio personality, but they brought me on board because they feel I’m the right fit for this team.”
She initially joined alongside Marto and comedian Nick Cody, who has since returned to Melbourne.
The show performed well at first but has since struggled to fire in the ratings.
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