Steve Price launches new radio show and fires into ‘soft’ rivals

Steve Price is returning to the airwaves and he’s launched a broadside at his “soft” rivals and former colleagues.

Steve Price has a new national show. Picture: Mark Stewart

Talkback king Steve Price is returning to breakfast radio and has come out swinging against his old rivals.

While other radio veterans, such as Alan Jones and John Burns have hung up the microphone, Price, 66, still has plenty to say.

Taking no prisoners, Price says the AM airwaves have gone soft, “with no conservative voice left”, leaving a gaping hole in the serious news and opinion space.

He says his old network at 3AW and 2GB have bowed to “localism” since being taken over by the Nine Network in 2019.

They’re too busy kowtowing to advertising dollars, says Price, at the expense of serious national news and tackling the issues at the forefront of people’s minds.

Steve Price has a new national show that is available via the LiSTNR app. Picture: Mark Stewart

“I just think the morning radio audience is after a broader conversation than what they are currently getting,” Price said in a no-holds-barred interview for the Saturday Herald Sun.

“What our competitors at Nine have done is walk away from a national conversation to try and capitalise on localism.

“They have gone very soft and safe. Nine as a media company with their radio assets got spooked by advertising boycotts, particularly in Sydney with Alan Jones on 2GB.

“They decided to make their radio offerings a lot more friendly than what they had been in the past. I mean they moved Alan Jones on for goodness sake.

“There is no conservative voice left, particularly in breakfast and extending through to lunchtime, and I think we are going to fill that gap pretty well.”

Price not only returns to a new network with Austereo, but a new format.

He will spearhead the first daily digital live streamed show airing “serious conversation.”

Alongside accomplished journalist and former Channel 10 anchor Natarsha Belling, Price will present the stories of the day to a national audience via the LiSTNR app.

“In a nutshell it’s the Netflix of radio,” Price says.

Australia Today With Steve Price has been years in the making.

He was sounded out by SCA’s chief executive Grant Blackley about the concept more than two years ago.

Natarsha Belling will work alongside Price on Australia Today. Picture: Toby Zerna

The technology was still developing and Price was still working grinding away on nights at 2GB.

Fast forward and Price is taking what he knows best, listening and dissecting issues in a national conversation, with a leap into the unknown.

“This is the future really. Every new car and probably every car that’s not ten years old has a Bluetooth connection, so you just put it on in your car and it’s just as if you’re listening to standard normal radio,” he said.

“I think people are clearly adapting to new technology. I don’t think you have to go back that far where people couldn’t even work out how to use Foxtel.

“Now virtually no-one doesn’t have some sort of visual streaming device in their house. My mother is 87 and she’s got Netflix and Foxtel and all of those things.”

Price, who is a Saturday Herald Sun columnist and a panellist on The Project, says a new challenge made the decision to come out of “semi-retirement” too hard to pass up.

It’s certainly not his first leap into the unknown.

Having worked at 3AW famously in Drive and as program director for more than ten years, he was the man who gave Ross Stevenson a job.

Price also started ill-fated Melbourne Talk Radio backed by good mate John Singleton a decade ago.

“My experience with Melbourne and new things is not entirely pleasant,” Price said.

“We started MTR and the biggest issue we had was the radio itself. The signal was so bad you couldn’t hear the program in the carpark out the front.

“We put to air some great radio, but nobody could hear it. At least this time people will be able to hear it.”

Price is emphatic about delivering to a national audience, saying Melbourne’s airwaves have caved to “localism”.

But he says you have to have lived in the major cities to get it, while taking a little jab at his former colleagues.

“I think it is important if you’re going to have a national presence that you have lived in more than one capital city.

“For example Neil Mitchell on 3AW describes everyone who lives in Sydney as a spiv. I know he’s joking, but Neil would have no idea what makes Sydney tick.

Price said 3AW was crazy to get rid of John Burns. Picture: Aaron Francis

Price said Neil Mitchell was too Melbourne focused to host a national show. Picture: Nicole Cleary

“Ross is still very much a clever radio broadcaster and his ratings are extraordinary, but I think it was a silly mistake to change the partnership between him and John Burns. I reckon that was crazy,

“Why would you change a winning formula like that? It just doesn’t make any sense and Russell Howcroft might be a very nice guy, but I just don’t think he is anywhere near as polished or as loveable as John was.

“It’s like Yoko Ono breaking up The Beatles, it made no sense to me whatsoever.”

Price left Nine-owned 2GB in Sydney, disillusioned after the new bosses came in. Moving from nights back to drive, he found his groove again only to be told to move back.

“I’m not a revengeful sort of person, but I don’t like the way they do business,” he said of his old employer.

He discovered via his longstanding manager Chris Giannopoulos that he was to be moved back to nights just six months into his two year contract.

“I was standing in the foyer of a bank in Sydney when Chris called. I said to Chris I’m not interested in going back to nights. If they don’t want me on afternoons they can pay me for the rest of 2020 and I’m not going back.

“I’ve never had a conversation with anyone from Nine Radio since. I’d been there 10 years. I never had a conversation with Nine’s managing director of radio Tom Malone or Greg Byrnes the program director.

“It all came through my manager Chris G and that’s the way they treated people. So I’m very pleased that I’m now in competition with them.”

But Price says he doesn’t see himself as a “grumpy old bugger.” Price is proving the opposite.

“Forty three days in the South African jungle will do that,” he says of his stint on I’m A Celebrity Get Me Out of Here back in 2017.

Not many white privileged males, admit, or are willing to change. But deep conversations with “a tatted-up footballer like Dane Swan” and Muslim comedian Nazeem Hussain gave him a new perspective.

“I understood the struggles the Muslim community in Australia went through, particularly during the times of heavy and deadly terrorist attacks.

“Hussein’s sister would be abused on the tram on the way home for wearing a hijab. Nazeem explained that through a different set of eyes

“When I got out I had him over for lunch and there I am out in Richmond hunting around for the halal meat.

“It opened my eyes. You had nothing to do in there but talk and I came out a better broadcaster on radio and a better person on television for it.

“I would describe myself as a common sense person. I have never been hard Right or hard Left.”

Whatever side of the dial, one thing is certain, Price is not short of an opinion.

Australia With Steve Price kicks off Wednesday April 7 via the LiSTNR app from 7am.