Alan Jones, Ray Hadley and Nine battle for control of Sydney’s 2GB
A three-way power struggle at top-rating 2GB is threatening its continued dominance of the Sydney airwaves, with Nine pushing for more of its content and TV stars on the radio station, and Alan Jones and Ray Hadley engaged in an arm-wrestle over its future direction.
A three-way power struggle at top-rating talk radio station 2GB is threatening its future dominance of the Sydney airwaves.
Four weeks after Alan Jones returned to the helm of his breakfast show on a hard-won new $8 million contract — scuttling a management-backed plan to overthrow 2GB’s breakfast’s reigning king and replace him with morning show host Ray Hadley, also on a new $8 million contract — Jones and Hadley remain engaged in an arm-wrestle over the direction of the station, its content and culture.
Now, taking its own opposing position in 2GB’s war room is new majority stakeholder Nine, which, with a 54.5 per cent stake in the station’s parent company Macquarie Media and an appetite for greater control, has begun to agitate for softer, more female-friendly content that, according to industry stalwarts, will put at risk 2GB’s entrenched conservative audience and ratings domination.
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Radio insiders last week said while the battle between Jones and Hadley for radio’s iron throne — the breakfast radio slot — still simmers, it has been overshadowed by Nine’s increased interference as it flexes its muscle and pushes for more Nine content on the radio airwaves.
The decision to insert Nine stars Karl Stefanovic, Deb Knight, Amber Sherlock, Phil Gould and Erin Molan into Steve Price’s new afternoon radio show is widely accepted as a sign of what is to come.
Sources say the battle lines at 2GB are now blurred between three powerful factions — Jones,
a Hadley/Macquarie management alliance, and Nine.
“What has become abundantly clear is that no one is singing from the same song book any more,” said one retired radio executive, asking not to be named as he lamented the future of AM radio in Sydney.
Nine, according to sources, is focused on cutting costs at Macquarie by as much as 50 per cent, and is looking to convert the medium into a cross-promotional platform for its TV, print and online assets while taking an axe to its sales and news forces — and middle management.
“(Nine non-executive chairman) Peter Costello wants to cut 2GB to shreds,” one well-placed radio source said last week.
“He wants to save between $2 million and $5 million in the next year and, following a writedown of business expectations and a blowout of costs — due largely to new contracts given to Jones, Hadley and (Steve) Price, and the Wagner defamation settlement — Costello is focused on the bottom line.”
Radio veterans were last week quick to point out that while Nine’s subsumed minority partner Fairfax Media once owned radio stations around the country — 2UE in Sydney, 3AW in Melbourne, 4BC in Brisbane and 6PR in Perth, all acquired in 2007 when Fairfax bought Southern Cross Broadcasting — it never managed to capture Sydney.
“Over seven or eight years of ownership, Fairfax never made any gains in Sydney,” said one radio executive.
“It just kept losing audience share, pushing 2UE (politically) towards the left, leaving it vulnerable to take over.”
Fairfax’s 2015 merger with Macquarie Media would serve as the final blow to the once unassailable 2UE.
Now the fear from 2GB staff is that Nine may seek to do the same with that station.
Nine, meanwhile, has acquired a station that is embroiled in a bullying scandal that could yet consume its anointed future breakfast star, Hadley.
As the man hand-picked by management and Macquarie shareholders to replace Jones at breakfast and lead the station’s campaign for market dominance into the next decade, Hadley has spent the year plagued by a series of new bullying allegations from current 2GB staff that management is yet to resolve.
It hasn’t helped public perception 2GB management has aligned itself too closely with Hadley.
On Thursday, Hadley told his radio audience a former member of his staff, Chris Bowen, had initiated legal proceedings against him in the District Court claiming he’d been bullied by Hadley for many years.
“As it’s being heard in a court of law, it means I will have the opportunity to defend myself and that is more opportunity than I have had since these allegations first emerged,” Hadley said.
Jones, whose own explosive run-ins with radio staff through the decades is the stuff of radio legend, has privately told associates he is appalled at the way Hadley has treated staff members.
More recently the two warring stars are said to have failed to see eye-to-eye on the career of outgoing afternoon host Chris Smith.
Championed by Jones to believe he might one day aspire to replace Hadley in the morning slot or Jones at breakfast, Smith instead, following the breakfast show about-face on Jones, was offered the night slot.
Mortified, he rejected it, and quit. Insiders say Hadley was not sorry to see Smith leave. The latest battle between the two men sees them pitched strategically in a fight for the backing of Nine’s senior management.
Jones is fostering a friendship with Nine board director Costello. Hadley, meanwhile, has thrown his support behind a push to introduce Nine’s staff to the 2GB roster — among them presenter Molan, whose career Hadley has sponsored.
It’s a fight for which the two men may have inexhaustible reserves.
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