2GB’s Ray Hadley celebrates radio ratings win and 13kg weight loss
Last week’s radio ratings show 2GB’s newly slimline mornings host Ray Hadley is king of the airwaves, dominating the Sydney market and increasing his Brisbane audience share.
NSW
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Six months after he was snubbed by 2GB radio bosses who handed the station’s prized breakfast slot — a show once promised to him — to a younger Ben Fordham, Ray Hadley is enjoying a popularity surge that has helped Nine Radio to its largest win to date on Australia’s east coast.
In the latest radio survey results, released last week, Hadley dominated talk radio in Sydney, his 17.2 per cent share greater than 2GB’s new breakfast host Fordham’s 16.1 share, while simultaneously recording an impressive 14 point share of the FM-loving Brisbane market, up 2.7 points on his previous result.
Hadley’s strong margin handed 4BC its first win in the breakfast timeslot in four decades.
While acknowledging the result was “gratifying”, Hadley yesterday took little credit for the win attributing it instead to heightened public interest in the COVID-19 pandemic and the Queensland election.
“The public was desperate for information and they turned to us — that’s the key difference.
“I may never again achieve a 14 share in the Brisbane market but it’s very nice to have done it the once,” Hadley said, wrapping up another week of shows from his COVID-safe home studio in Sydney’s northwest.
Back in 2015, when Hadley’s show was first networked to Queensland following the 2014 merger of former owners Macquarie Media/Fairfax Radio, the broadcaster described the challenge ahead of him — turning a losing 4.3 share into a winning one — as “massive”.
“I’m always looking for challenges and I think this is probably my biggest one,” he said then.
Hadley said he owed his success largely to one man, veteran broadcaster John Laws, whose formula Hadley has been emulating for two decades.
“Because I saw what Laws did — and how Laws did it — how he expanded into the regions taking his winning formula further and further afield, I could see that it could be done.
“The people listening to 4BC and 2GB feel the same joy and the same pain.
“You don’t have to record different shows to hold their interest, you just have to understand what they have in common.”
Newly svelte after shedding 13kg during the past eight weeks, on the advice of doctors — his blood pressure was too high — Hadley paid tribute to Fordham for delivering a consistently strong audience lead to his morning show: “I didn’t think anyone could replace Alan Jones in two surveys — Jones was an institution for 30 years — but Ben’s giving people what they want.”