John Laws’ death sparks industry introspection about the future of commercial talkback radio
The old talkback kings wielded immense power, but the dial has moved on … as have audiences.
The big guns of talkback radio in Australia – Alan Jones, John Laws and Ray Hadley – have vacated their Sydney studios one by one.
Jones retired from 2GB in May 2020, citing health advice but damaged by scandal. Hadley quit 2GB last December, saying he wanted to spend more time with his family.
Laws left the building for good this week, dead at 90. He’d retired from radio last November after hosting a morning talk show on Sydney’s 2SM for 13 years. It was not the top-rating program of his heyday at 2UE and 2GB, more a lifeline to the medium he found difficulty leaving.
News this week about the final Laws exit to radioland’s Valhalla has nonetheless sparked much industry introspection, not just about the man with the golden voice and his cultural significance but about the future of commercial talkback radio as a genre.
Can it survive? Where does talkback go from here in a fragmenting media market, as younger audiences distrust traditional media and look elsewhere for authentic voices to inform them?
Laws was the king of talkback. He first appeared on Sydney’s 2UE in 1957 after honing his skills on country radio. While ferociously ambitious and keen to experiment, he was helped by management mentors Allan Faulkner and John Brennan who realised commercial radio needed to move away from sleepy serials if it was to survive the onslaught of television.
After a stint of back-announcing top 40 hits, Laws grasped that the way to attract mass appeal on radio was to develop his personal persona and make a direct connection with listeners. He opened the phone lines to ordinary people, heard their gripes and magnified them on air.
Laws’ audience grew rapidly, and so did his power and influence. Love or hate Laws, prime ministers and premiers came to realise the benefits to them of direct-access radio. The big lure of appearing with Laws on his show was an opportunity to bypass press gallery journalists’ and send an unfiltered message to voters.
Of course, there was always the risk of embarrassment if Laws asked a tricky question, but the bigger fear was retribution for declining a Laws invitation.
Laws had his imitators, and he seemed to think competitors who followed him, including Jones, copied his formula. And to a large degree, they did.
Jones did not get his start in radio until 1985 after teaching at a private boys’ school, writing speeches for Malcolm Fraser and coaching the Wallabies rugby team. At one stage, Jones had political aspirations of his own – he failed twice to win the NSW state seat of Earlwood as a Liberal candidate in the late 1970s.
His brand on radio was always somewhat different to that of Laws – he became a conservative demagogue as soon as he hit the airwaves.
Despite a career spanning 43 years in radio, Hadley was a relative latecomer to talkback compared with Laws and Jones. He started his 2GB morning show in 2002 after years of football commentating and rose to the top from there.
Hadley steered clear of the “cash for comment” scandals that engulfed Laws and Jones. If the trio shared any similar traits, apart from huge egos, it was their approach to radio as a spectator sport, their proclivity to offend and their run-ins with broadcasting authorities.
Popular interstate equivalents can’t be ignored, notably Neil Mitchell and Derryn Hinch in Melbourne, but talkback radio began as a Sydney phenomenon and largely stayed that way. Network syndication of programs helped the Sydney shock jocks expand their reach nationally.
In his biography, Laws: A Life of Power, journalist John Lyons wrote: “The history of commercial radio in Australia shows a mass audience responds best to glib, reactionary viewpoints with few allowances for subtleties. The world according to talkback is black and white; shades of grey take up time. And it might be boring – the surest way to lose listeners.”
Unlike Jones, Laws was never really a political animal. He seemed to lean conservative, railing against union strikes and dole bludgers, but he could be unpredictable. He identified with truckies and spoke up for downtrodden working people, even if he was not one of them. First and foremost, Laws regarded himself as an entertainer.
As he bounced back and forth between Sydney’s commercial radio stations, taking his audience with him, Laws boosted his salary with each move and became Australia’s highest-paid broadcaster.
It was not really until the 1970s that Laws developed an interest in politics when he realised that he could easily “persuade” a prime minister to come on his program. When Gough Whitlam and Malcolm Fraser sat in his studio, Laws came to terms with the power and influence he wielded. Even then, he was not naturally political, or highly sophisticated, but his interviews were quick-witted and intelligent.
Laws told Lyons that he agreed with what Whitlam was trying to do for Australia’s benefit: he said Whitlam was trying to create some kind of utopia “but forgot who was going to have to pay for it”.
Much later, Paul Keating as Labor treasurer in the Hawke government, befriended Laws. It was on the Laws show in 1986 that Keating famously warned that Australia was in danger of becoming a “banana republic” if the nation’s terms-of-trade imbalance was not rectified.
The remark upset financial markets, but Keating’s choice of words was deliberate and he chose the Laws program as his megaphone. A year later, Keating said: “Forget about the press gallery. If you educate John Laws, you educate middle Australia.”
NSW premiers, too, saw the benefits of talking to Laws with his wide audience reach across Sydney and the state. Neville Wran was a regular guest, and later Nick Greiner. Bob Carr became fascinated with talkback radio, calling it “electronic democracy” because of its capacity to shape public opinion and give ordinary Australians a sense of direct participation.
Carr appeared on the Laws show many times over his decade as premier. He also, sensibly, recognised the influence of Jones and courted him as well.
As Chris Masters wrote in his biography, Jonestown, despite some ups and downs, Carr’s strategy was to engage with Jones on-air, including “surrendering” to him on some occasions.
Carr insisted at the time that Jones did not vet major policy shifts by his government. Yet he was clearly wary of Jones’s influence, as Carr’s biographer Andrew West records: ministerial offices were told to “assign someone to monitor Jones’s program and ensure that his correspondence was answered in 24 hours”.
John Howard appeared many times, as opposition leader and later as prime minister, on both the Laws and Jones programs. He was politically closer to Jones, and therefore seemed more comfortable with Jones than Laws. But Howard wrote in his memoir, Lazarus Rising, that many talkback hosts – he named Jones, Hadley, Mitchell and Laws – did not fit any stereotype. He added: Often contrarian, they can take a more conservative stance, and to great effect.” Howard singled out Jones for his impact on the republican debate in 1999 and later global warming.
John Wells, who served as Howard’s press secretary in opposition and sat in on Laws and Jones interviews with Howard, tells Inquirer that he believes talkback radio has a future – but he cautions that it will depend on who runs talkback and who holds the microphone.
As a former 2UE journalist and longtime political consultant, Wells rates Laws and Jones as the standouts, and difficult to replace: “Historically they brought talkback to the people, and the audience was fascinated. In some respects, there is a decline in talkback now because there are some also-rans in the business who can’t generate interest among the public.”
Setting aside the current troubles of Jones in court, Wells says he and Laws had firm views on many issues, were articulate on government policy, and could argue a case seriously with political leaders.
“Today there’s not the same weight and gravitas when the prime minister is being interviewed. I don’t get excited by somebody interviewing Albanese because no one puts him on the spot.”
Wells has noticed Albanese bypassing traditional talkback radio for the sometimes wild commercial breakfast hosts Kyle Sandilands and Jackie O on Sydney’s KIIS 106.5. The choice of Albanese and his minders, according to Wells, says much about 2GB’s decline, not just a prime minister wanting to avoid scrutiny.
“Why is it that Sandilands and his on-air partner win the breakfast ratings from time to time over 2GB, and then 2GB wins it back? When I worked for Howard, you wouldn’t hesitate to talk to Laws or Jones.”
The Weekend Australian’s columnist Phillip Adams – who worked with Laws at 2UE, calls him a “monster”, and wrote the book Emperors of the Air about talkback – predicts talkback radio will survive despite newer alternatives.
“It’s been a huge social phenomenon, says Adams. “I think its poison will continue to flow through what’s left of media veins.
“People also forget that when talkback began, it wasn’t essentially conservative. In Melbourne, for instance, one of the original talkback announcers was my old friend Barry Jones … so it wasn’t innately conservative, it became such, here, and in the United States with Rush Limbaugh.
“It got worse and worse as various people like Laws and Jones and Stan Zemaneck and later Hadley, who came in from left field, tried to outdo each other as venomous bigots and bullies.”
Adams predicts that if John Singleton ends up buying 2GB from Nine Entertainment, as speculated, then Hadley will return to the air. He claims Jones could return as well, if cleared of current criminal charges against him. “I think Alan could make a huge comeback, which would be heavily ironic,” he says.
Kos Samaras, formerly a Labor strategist and now a director at political research company RedBridge, believes talkback is dying as a popular medium and being replaced by podcasts.
“Talkback radio hosts – Jones, Laws, Hinch and so on – they were really the Baby Boomer version of podcasts,” Samaras says. “People trusted the perspectives of the host because the host’s values aligned with theirs.
“Talkback was a format that worked very well with Baby Boomers, and to a lesser extent Gen-Xers. The podcast today is replacing that medium among younger listeners. They now overwhelmingly tune into particular podcasts they follow with the hosts they trust.
“The podcast market is also more willing to consume longform information than short grabs. They don’t trust sound bites, they don’t trust stuff that’s been curated too much. The more organic, the more spontaneous, the more authentic, the more likely you’re going to get their attention.”
Samaras agrees that a podcast can be manipulated just as easily as any other broadcast for radio or TV. But he claims younger consumers are flocking to podcasts in the belief that they align with their views.
For the federal election in May, Samaras says Labor’s campaign took the young demographic into account by promoting Albanese in podcasts, often ahead of traditional media. The Liberals, he says, also produced podcasts for Peter Dutton’s campaign, but less so.
“What’s happening now is that we’re all retreating into our echo chambers.”
More Coverage
To join the conversation, please log in. Don't have an account? Register
Join the conversation, you are commenting as Logout