End of an era as long-term weekday media voices hang up mics

In the next few weeks Peter Hitchener will have read his last weekday news bulletin, Neil Mitchell will have said goodbye to 3AW listeners and Eddie McGuire will exit his long-running quiz show.

Three key media

Come Monday next week Melbourne will be without two of the enduring weekday voices of our city. And soon, two will become three.

Peter Hitchener will have read his last weekday news bulletin on Channel 9 and Neil Mitchell will have said goodbye on 3AW for the last time.

Next Eddie McGuire exits his long running quiz show, also on Nine.

McGuire, Mitchell and Hitchener — it seems impossible to believe Melbourne will lose their daily presence all at once.

No one lasts forever, especially in media, but I can see no good reason why the Nine Entertainment group that employs all three feels the need for such radical change. In the case of Neil and Peter you can’t help but feel someone at the top believes old white guys – Hitchener is 77-years-old and Mitchell is 72 — are past their use by dates.

Eddie turns 60 next October – can you believe that? – so he better watch out.

Peter Hitchener has long been a familiar face delivering the 6pm news. Picture: David Caird

Melbourne has an amazing history when it comes to the major media voices we trust and treasure. Nine TV in Melbourne, almost unbelievably, has only had three main news anchors in its history.

First Sir Eric Pearce then Brian Naylor – tragically killed in the Black Saturday bushfires – and Hitch, as Peter is affectionally known.

Morning radio likewise has been reluctant to make changes with the Derryn Hinch years briefly interrupted by Adelaide’s Murray Nicol before Mitchell took over the microphone in 1990. Eddie meanwhile has been a TV quiz master for most of the last 23 years, first on Who Wants to Be a Millionaire then Millionaire Hot Seat since 2009.

That’s the longest-running game show on TV and its episodes will run out at the end of January next year.

I have written here in the past about my relationship with Neil, but no one can deny his work ethic and his parochial love of Melbourne.

So planted in the fabric of this city is Neil that he publicly slags off at Sydney, regularly calling anyone from the Harbour City spivs. A silly cliché that makes him sound like a hillbilly from a country town.

Neil Mitchell has at times been seen as a polarising figure. Picture: Asanka Ratnayake

While Peter Hitchener is universally loved like the kind old uncle, Neil and Eddie have been polarising figures at times during their careers.

Eddie was of course at one time literally “Eddie Everywhere.”

He was the founding host of the Footy Show, anchored Triple M breakfast with Luke Darcy, anchored footy coverage on that same network, called AFL on Foxtel and is widely seen as the best live TV presenter in Australia.

His tenure as CEO of the Nine network in Sydney probably didn’t go as well as he would have liked while the treatment of Eddie at Collingwood was in my view disgraceful. After dragging the Magpies out of near poverty, he used his contacts at the AFL and in politics to establish the club’s base smack bang in the middle of Melbourne’s sporting precinct.

Eddie then went on a sponsorship blitz dragging in revenue from global companies like the airline Emirates and car giant Holden before becoming sidelined as president by some concocted board room coup.

Incredibly, aside from a late-night TV footy show once a week, Eddie will have in just a few years basically disappeared from mainstream media.

I think he would have been the perfect replacement for Mitchell.

As competent as Neil’s announced replacement Tom Elliott is, Eddie is Mr Melbourne, and would be a huge asset to 3AW.

It’s a job I know he would kill to take on and he has the radio experience from Triple M, the best contact book in Australia and the sort of ego needed for that job.

How Nine management failed to see that is beyond me unless of course they offered it to him, and he declined.

Eddie McGuire at Champions Stakes Day at Flemington on Saturday, November 5, 2022 Picture: Channel 10

As for Neil – who is at pains to point out he is not retiring but just winding back – what will his legacy be?

I think his longevity is something to be proud of in a particularly fickle industry like broadcast radio. Neil’s stubbornness and inability to handle even mild criticism of himself is a weakness and smacks of hypocrisy.

Neil felt that could use his three and a half hours live every day for 33 years to criticise others, but he reacted badly when anyone had a go at him.

He recently described me as an “irrelevant self- promoter” because I dared to comment about a disagreement he had with Eddie. When I called Kyle Sandilands a “grubby buffoon” he sided with Kyle. This is the same Neil who himself famously called Collingwood premiership star Jordan De Goey a “misogynistic, anti-social, Bali boofhead”.

Neil’s inability to work through his differences with former Premier Daniel Andrews also robbed the AW audience of a balanced view of Victoria before and after Covid.

Melbourne is the big loser as 3AW and Nine-part ways with and sideline Peter, Ed and Neil. The decision smacks of ageism to me and a blind belief that unless you have a massive social media presence then you are not wanted.

Monday won’t be the same without them.

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Originally published as End of an era as long-term weekday media voices hang up mics