Why the era of the all-powerful talkback radio titan is over for good
The golden microphone on John Laws’ coffin symbolised an era of radio power that died with him, as industry experts say such influence can never be replicated.
The golden microphone sitting on top of talkback host John Laws’ coffin in St Andrews Cathedral this week was a glittering reminder of just how much power he once wielded.
Now the titan of talkback is dead and so too are the chances of anyone following in his airwaves ever receiving a golden microphone of their own.
The money simply is not there.
Media analyst Nic Hayes, managing director of Media Stable, said Laws and his now retired and legally embattled radio rival Alan Jones were unique characters but from a bygone era.
“I don’t think we will ever see their like again, they were incredibly powerful in their time,” he said. “They were the voice of their time but audiences have moved on and would not listen to them today. They are not a reflection of society.”
Back in the 1980s and 1990s John Laws was the voice of Australia with two million listeners across the nation. Prime Minister Bob Hawke once said his listeners “are” Australia and secured victory in the 1983 election by announcing every key policy on his show.
And another Labor Prime Minister, Paul Keating, summed up his reach by dismissing the press gallery and saying that “if you educate John Laws you educate Australia.”
Things are very different today.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s biggest media move in the last election did not come from courting talkback hosts. He reached the Gen Z audience by going onto a podcast with Lucy Jackson and Nikki Westcott and accepting their dare to use the phrase “delulu with no solulu” in parliament.
The Happy Hour with Lucy & Nikki podcasters have a combined audience of 640,000 followers on Instagram – a quarter of the listeners Laws could boast at the height of his powers.
So great was his reach that radio station 2UE presented him with the gold-plated Sennheiser Microphone in 2003 to mark his 50 years on radio and persuade him not to leave the station.
Those were the golden days of talkback radio. Everything was gold. The microphone, his tonsils and the paycheck which at one point topped $11 million a year and made him the highest paid radio host in the world.
The Rolls-Royce Phantom was black not gold, but it might as well have been.
The audience delivered the power and brought in the advertisers who in turn delivered the money. Laws delivered the goods, using his “golden tonsils” to sell anything and everything. His ad for Valvoline, “you know what I mean”, became a household phrase.
Laws saw no problem with spruiking content for advertisers and got into trouble for taking cash for favourable comments on air. When a listener wrote in and called him a cheap whore he read it out on air and then said: “I’m not cheap”.
Today, audiences have diversified across multiple outlets and platforms and the reach of radio stations is more difficult than ever to measure - with ratings metrics changed and obscured.
Rob McKnight, co-owner of TV Blackbox, said the key to measuring the power of radio is to simply follow the money.
“Advertising money is now diversified, more targeted, and going to influencers to reach younger audiences,” he said. “The radio stars are not living the high life like their predecessors.”
Laws not only ate at Otto every day beneath his apartment on the Finger Wharf at Woolloomooloo, at one stage he even owned it. “2GB breakfast host Ben Fordham goes home and looks after his kids,” McKnight said.
Fordham is arguably one of the last of the radio titans, commanding a 14.2 per cent share of the Sydney breakfast market and taking out top spot in the most recent ratings survey.
“Ben Fordham is very big but not on the scale of Alan Jones or John Laws,” said McKnight. And he might not be on air for that much longer either. He has already flagged his exit, telling The Saturday Telegraph last month that he has no plan on “dying behind the microphone”.
Ray Hadley, another talkback titan with enormous clout, has also left the airwaves. “Talkback still has power but not at the same level,” said McKnight. “Ray Hadley was a big name but his replacement Mark Levy is not.”
However Hadley is on the record saying that if ad man John Singleton buys back the radio assets he sold to Nine in 2019, which includes 2GB, he would resume his seat behind the microphone. “I’m on the record to say, ‘If Singo owns it, I’m back for sure,” he said on Sky News.
Behind the scenes it seems that deal could be a very real possibility with Singleton and billionaire Hungry Jack’s owner Jack Cowin rumoured to have reached an agreement in the last couple of weeks. It would be a great deal for Singo, who sold his one third share in the radio network to Nine for $80 million, and is now understood to be looking at buying it back for somewhere between $25 million and $30 million.
Having a larrikin like Singleton taking over the radio stations from left leaning Nine and its woke cohort could see Hadley back for a last roar of the dinosaurs. But Hadley is already 71-years-old and with no real successor in sight even he may struggle to wield the same power for long.
Across the dial on FM Kyle Sandilands and Jackie O’Henderson have secured a 10-year $200 million contract at ARN that has hit the radio station’s bottom line and helped drive down its share price by 50 per cent.
“So, are we worth it?” Sandilands told listeners. “No.”
McKnight said their gigantic contract was “the last big deal” Australia would see in the media. Audiences are diversifying and advertisers are targeting their spending away from mass reach radio.
“Back in the 1980s it was raining gold,” McKnight said. “John Laws could make or break a prime minister. Things have changed. No single person will have that power again.”
Originally published as Why the era of the all-powerful talkback radio titan is over for good
