In the great Sydney-Melbourne rivalry, when it comes to ABC Radio, the southern capital still wags the dog: a Melbourne troika was behind Sally Loane's removal as 702's morning presenter.
They are Virginia Trioli, a Melbourne ABC broadcaster and Loane's replacement, Sue Howard, the head of ABC Radio, and Michael Mason, the head of ABC local radio in capital cities.
As Loane made her farewell broadcast yesterday, Mason confirmed "I was very much involved" in her axing, as were Howard and 702's station manager, Roger Summerill. He said Loane had done "an outstanding job but we just believe that we can grow that to another level. We want to be as relevant as possible to our charter."
Loane's dumping follows Angela Catterns move to Vega. Both were two of 702's biggest drawcards and both were promoted by the ABC to high heaven. But the media were banned from Loane's last show and ABC bosses went into similar denial when Catterns left in June.
The ABC left breakfast swinging in the breeze, using try-outs and try-hards, until it unveiled Radio National's Julie McCrossin yesterday as Catterns's replacement . She starts Monday week.
Loane, whose program was snidely known around the ABC's Ultimo corridors as "The Pony Club" because of her North Shore image, bid listeners goodbye with a good-natured dig at the at the antagonistic inner-city mind set to her broadcasting style uncovered by ABC research. "Good morning Sydney - and Leichhardt - thanks for listening," Loane said, going on to counter ABC complaints of lousy ratings. She said that since she started the show in 1999, she had lifted ratings from 6.4 to 9.
Loane told the Herald she was saddened not so much by her exit as the way she was forced out.
"I had been thinking for a long time of moving on. It's a very physically demanding job ... the very early morning starts - 5.30 am - the reading, there's quite a lot I won't miss," she said.
"There are some media and corporate proposals, but for the moment it's family."
Melburnians have a dismal history trying to crack Sydney radio. Steve Price and Judith Lucy are among Bleak City stumblers and failures.
For Trioli, who is known around the Melbourne studios as "the princess", the ABC's strategy was to move her north for a month to indoctrinate her in Sydney culture, learn pronunciation of suburb names and meet the right people. That unravelled last Sunday when she was named as Loane's replacement in The Sun-Herald.
Looking somewhat foolish, the ABC confirmed Trioli's appointment yesterday but gave no starting date.
Loane and Trioli are studies in contrast. Loane, 49, often spoke of her country background and regaled listeners with snippets of eastern suburbs family life - her husband, Robert Sorby, is a District Court judge. While Trioli, 41, is hard-wired and sassy and lives in North Melbourne (for Sydney, read Leichhardt) with her husband, Sunday Age journalist Russell Skelton.
Even their books indicate different backgrounds and preoccupations. While doing publicity for Who Cares? Guilt, Hope and the Child-Care Debate, Loane said she felt guilty leaving her baby, Lachlan, with a nanny, and how she had outsourced all her housework. Trioli emphasised her feminism in her 1996 book, Generation F: Sex, Power and the Young Feminist, (a riposte to Helen Garner's The First Stone, which is about sexual harassment at Melbourne University's Ormond College).
Trioli's critics maintain she is smug, inner-city and know-it-all. She agrees she has astonishing self-confidence. "Yes I do," she told an interviewer. "I was a classically self-confident child who did debating, drama." She also studied ballet for 10 years and went to a state school.
Her trajectory has been vertical since joining The Age in 1991. She won the 1995 business report Walkley award but left in 2000 over interference on a column about the Bracks Government. She moved to the Bulletin magazine, then the ABC's Melbourne showcase station 774. Her savaging of the former defence minister, Peter Reith, over the children overboard affair earned her drive team the 2002 Walkley for radio current affairs reporting, although of late she has been an opinion for hire, appearing not infrequently on The Insiders' couch.
Television drives Trioli to Sydney. She once rejected overtures to report on an ABC arts programs saying she wanted to be presenter or nothing. She recently tried out for Media Watch but lost to Liz Jackson, and she has reportedly negotiated a job with a new Sydney-produced ABC television arts program in addition to 702 duties.
ABC bosses are arguing over bringing Trioli's show forward 30 minutes to 8.30am. Loane, too, thought about the earlier start after Catterns left but her cards were marked 20 months earlier.
In January 2004 Summerill told Loane about qualitative research on presenters the ABC had commissioned. It showed Loane divided listeners: slightly older, middle-class, affluent supporters thought her friendly, enthusiastic and reflecting their world view while detractors considered she catered for a white, Anglo-Saxon, North Shore audiences, and was a "Miss Goody-Goody-Two-Shoes" who loved pearls, rugby and four-wheel drives.
Summerill did not overtly tell her to change style. In fact, since 2000 management has used US radio consultant Valerie Geller to coach presenters. Her message: bring out the inner warmth.
Loane said her improved ratings lift were proof of Geller's philosophy: "I was strong on current affairs and politics and getting stuck into the big stories, and resisted the suggestions to be fluffier and more 'entertaining'. In the end I had worked hard on maintaining a mix of journalism, and softer magazine stories."
In February 2004, the Herald's Sue Javes wrote a story about the research. Clearly management knives were being sharpened.
Loane told friends she felt an outsider, that her bosses were uncomfortable with her and that she was being occasionally excluded from ABC gab fests. The shadow fell last January when Summerill put her on a six-month contract.
In June, with Catterns going, Loane braced Summerill about the contract and suggested an earlier start, springboarding off AM. Summerill said they would talk when she returned from school holidays leave.
On Monday, July 25, at the end of her show, Loane met with Summerill. It was civilised, short if not sweet: she was out but would be allowed to stay until the end of August, but essentially Alice Band doesn't live here anymore.
Management leaked, again, this time out of Melbourne. The August 5 edition of The Age reported that Trioli was heading north, although it guessed Vega 95.3 or Catterns's old breakfast job were her targets. Late last Saturday Loane bought a copy of the Sun Herald. Page three featured a photo of Trioli and a story that said Loane was out. The Monday papers went into a frenzy. Humiliated, Loane told Summerill she would leave on Friday. On Thursday she put her ABC problems into perspective when she addressed a Wesley Mission memorial service on suicides at the Sydney Opera House.
Loane said a friend had asked her if this was the worst week of her life: "The worst minute, the worst day, the worst week, the worst month and the worst year of my life was when I lost my brother John. He took his own life when he was 28."