Payday for the man who made 2GB what it is today

John Singleton transformed 2GB from a cellar-dweller into a ratings juggernaut.

John Singleton at his home on the Strawberry Hill Stud at Mount White. Picture: Troy Snook

He’s the man who transformed 2GB from a cellar-dweller of the Sydney AM radio market into a ratings juggernaut.

John Singleton’s move in 2001-02 to poach Alan Jones and Ray Hadley from the once-dominant Sydney station 2UE (paying Jones the then-unthinkable salary of $4 million a year) revolutionised radio by conclusively proving that stars could transcend network brands by bringing an audience from one radio station to another. In 2014, Sydney FM breakfast king Kyle Sandilands validated the Singleton strategy when he and his on-air partner Jackie O defected with similar success from the previously successful 2Day FM to Kiis FM.

Now, after nearly two decades as a radio baron, Singleton is set to depart the airwaves for good, under an offer from Nine that values his 32.3 per cent stake in Macquarie at $80.8m.

Initially, when Nine announced in July last year that it was taking over the former Fairfax and its radio interests, Singleton made loud noises that his Macquarie stake was “not for sale” to the media giant.

But in an exclusive March interview with The Australian, his tune changed dramatically. “It’s inevitable I will sell it. I will not hang on to it and be a minority shareholder,” he said. “I would rather have things myself. I don’t like disagreements.”

Contrary to Singleton’s words, in the five months since that interview there have been plenty of disagreements with Nine — mainly about price.

Singleton wanted about $100m for his stake. But Nine wasn’t having a bar of it. A tense negotiation saw it offering a lot less, something noted in Media Diary a few months back. And Nine put another caveat: it would buy Singleton out of Macquarie only if Jones’s contract was renewed. This presented a problem for Singo: he made no secret of his plans to replace Jones on breakfast with Hadley. After Nine’s edict, Singleton embarked on a salvage mission to renew Jones’s contract, but only after ­already having agreed to a hefty, breakfast-sized pay rise for Hadley. When Jones’s contract was eventually renewed a couple of months ago it left Macquarie paying $4m a year to 2GB’s big stars.

Now Singleton is finally getting his Macquarie payday. But with Nine now offering $1.46 for each Macquarie share, he will only get about $81m for his stake — $19m short of what he wanted. Part of the problem was that the company’s profits fell in recent months, amid all of the uncertainty about Jones’s future. Also, Nine was the only possible buyer.

Still, don’t cry too much for Singleton. His inspired move to bring across Jones and Hadley from 2UE to 2GB more than 15 years ago made him millions, even before his upcoming $81m payday from Nine. As he told The Australian in March: “I made Alan rich and Alan made 2GB successful … a good deal for both of us.”