Tim Bailey gets new job at 2GB after being axed by Network 10
It was the longest 20 minutes of his life. Sacked by Network Ten after 28 years and cut adrift in Sydney’s cutthroat media maelstrom, popular weatherman Tim Bailey was bereft. Then came a fortuitous phone call which changed his career once again.
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It was a crazy 20 minutes that changed Tim Bailey’s life.
First he received a phone call from Channel 10, his employer of 28 years, informing him that his services at the network where he began his career as a weather presenter at Good Morning Australia were no longer required.
The weatherman whose boundless energy and limitless enthusiasm had elevated him to something of a cult figure in Sydney TV was, suddenly, a lost soul.
“In that moment you begin to doubt everything you've ever worked for and ever done,” said Bailey, who does not elaborate on his sacking at Network Ten, adding only that it was “sudden and unexpected”.
Bailey was one of a number of high-profile casualties involved in what is now becoming something of an infamous bloodletting at Ten — a cost-cutting exercise that also accounted for Kerri-Anne Kennerley and Natarsha Belling (the latter snapped by paparazzi on the morning she arrived to work on August 10, oblivious to the fact they had been tipped off about her imminent sacking).
But it was news of Bailey’s demise that was perhaps the most shocking.
Until that point the gregarious weather guru had been as much a part of Ten’s news as their newsreader Sandra Sully.
His unceremonious sacking sent a message that the axe would spare no one.
However, Bailey did not have long to sink into a post-firing funk.
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Just 20 minutes later he picked up a call from 2GB’s breakfast host Ben Fordham, freshly installed in the coveted slot occupied for 35 years by Alan Jones and looking for a weatherman.
“Well, actually I made room,” said Fordham, recalling how he heard the news of the Ten sackings on the news “like everyone else”.
“I remember I was wandering around Westfield and the news popped up on my phone and my initial reaction was: ‘Well, no one likes to see anyone lose a job’.
“But Tim was the one that I was the most shocked about.
“So I called (Nine Radio’s content boss) Greg Byrnes and I said: ‘Have you seen the news?’
“And he said: ‘Yeah, what are you thinking?’
“And I said: ‘I’m thinking we are mad if we don’t get him’.”
And get him they did. Bailey had agreed to terms within minutes and a verbal deal was struck — he would start delivering weather bulletins both for both Fordham at breakfast and Jim Wilson on the drive shift.
Ten‘s “Tim The Weatherman” was suddenly 2GB’s “Daily Bailey”.
“The bizarre thing in all of this was that I was about two years from retirement,” said Bailey, whose wife Samantha was set to become the family’s sole breadwinner as the marketing executive of a major Silicon Valley oncology company Varian Medical Systems.
Bailey, meanwhile, was heading down the road of writing children’s books with a number of titles — including The Stuck Duck — lined up through Hachette.
“But instead this whole experience has given me a second chance on radio,” Bailey said.
“So Ten letting me go turned out to be the best thing that ever happened to me in a way. “Which is kind of funny when you think about it but also goes to show, if you stay positive, you never know what’s around the corner.”