Radio recluse makes power play for Alan Jones

Radio network proprietor Bill Caralis rarely shows his hand but this month the eccentric recluse made a call from his Gold Coast bolthole that brought his extraordinary radio dream into focus.

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Radio network proprietor Bill Caralis rarely shows his hand but this month the eccentric recluse made a call from his Gold Coast bolthole that brought his extraordinary radio dream into focus.

Caralis, radio sources have confirmed, reached out to soon-to-be-out-of-contract 2GB breakfast star Alan Jones two weeks ago in the hope of enticing Jones to make the jump to Caralis’s 2SM Super Network, the largest privately owned radio network in the country.

Alan Jones. Picture: John Feder

In making the call, Caralis — renowned for being as private as he is patient — has done a rare thing and shed light on his hopes of reuniting two of Australian radio’s biggest stars — Jones and broadcasting legend John Laws.

Since 2011 Laws has hosted a morning show on Caralis’s 2SM, a station that does not subscribe to the radio ratings system hence does not have its audience measured and analysed by the industry at large.

Despite the lack of ratings, Laws, a radio veteran of 60 years, still has a loyal following throughout NSW and Queensland on 2SM.

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Yesterday Laws, through a rep, said he would be happy to work with Jones again, despite their fantastic feuds at 2UE in the 1980s and 1990s being the stuff of radio legend.

“They get along very well and respect each other,” said a spokeswoman for Laws, who at 83 is five years older than Jones, 78.

The plan to reunite the two talk giants has the potential to be hugely profitable for Caralis.

It would mean Jones would walk away from the embrace of businessman John Singleton, the man who built a radio station — 2GB — around him, but as this columnist learned last week, the embers of that love affair went cold last year around the time “Singo” was hit with the bill for the Wagner defamation case, a case centred around comments Jones made on radio about the Toowoomba family.

Bill Caralis, in the centre of the front row, is flanked by League legends Tommy Raudonikis and Phil Gould. Picture: supplied

In Caralis, Jones can expect to find a man whose love for the medium is not linked to market valuations or short-term returns.

He’s proved he’s in radio for the long game.

While Caralis is unlikely to be in a position to match the $4 million a year Jones current earns at 2GB, the offer could, if not this year, then one day hold tremendous appeal to Jones — who has cause to feel slighted by 2GB’s slow manoeuvrings in re-signing him.

Laws enjoys great freedoms in his career at 2SM.

With no program director to interfere with his program content, the country music lover is free to talk to whomever he wants — NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian, new One Nation recruit Mark Latham, US singer/songwriter Neil Diamond, Bob Geldof, Richard Branson, or plain Bill from Balmain.

If Jones was to move, he would once again become colleagues with radion veteran John Laws. Picture: John Appleyard

It’s been a decade since Caralis, now in his 70s, has given any glimpse into his ambitions.

Regarded as the most frugal media proprietor in the country — the one-time Newtown Jets rugby league executive who made his first fortune in shopping centres before branching into media in the 1980s — spends little capital on equipment but what he has on talent.

Caralis is said to enjoy one thing above all else from his radio investments. Power.

With Jones on board in the breakfast slot, he would enjoy more of that than he’s ever previously known.

A match made in heaven and one, this writer suspects, Caralis will not give up on should he fail this time to persuade Jones to make the move.

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