With a knock on his door, radio king Alan Jones ends a record reign

Alan Jones was barely six months into an $8m, two-year contract when he began contemplating calling time.

Alan Jones was still the most dominant voice in Australian broadcasting — and was barely six months into an $8m, two-year contract — when he began contemplating calling time on his 35-year career in radio.

The undisputed king of the airwaves suspected that his card had been marked by his new bosses. He knew his days were numbered.

In January, Nine Radio chief Tom Malone met with 2GB talent following the full takeover of the former Macquarie Network.

The Australian understands that at that time Jones indicated to Malone that he might want to leave the station earlier than the June 2021 expiry date of his most recent, most lucrative contract.

Increasingly concerned about his health and exhausted by the infighting at 2GB that had almost seen him driven out in 2019, Jones was ready to walk.

The relationship between Jones and 2GB Morning Show star host Ray Hadley was at its lowest ebb, with Hadley known to have long harboured a desire to replace Jones in the sought-after breakfast show slot.

That outcome would have been anathema to Jones; and as it happened, Jones’s resignation on Tuesday morning was soon followed by an announcement that he would be replaced by his preferred successor, 43-year-old Ben Fordham.

Jones maintains he had no role in choosing Fordham as his replacement but the decision pleased him, particularly as he is a fan (Fordham’s brother is also his agent and the family are old friends) and had the added benefit of preventing Hadley inheriting his spot.

Broadcaster Alan Jones announces his retirement from radio at his home in Sydney on Tuesday.

Jones, 79, has been living dangerously at 2GB for more than a year, despite his unrivalled ratings figures. Intervention by Nine chairman Peter Costello had allowed Jones to sign on — with the support of Nine CEO Hugh Marks — to a new two-year deal in May 2019. But not long after inking the deal, Jones felt the clock was ticking on his time at 2GB.

The alarm clock sounded on his future on Friday, May 1, when Malone knocked on Jones’s door at his Southern Highlands property.

Time was up: Jones’s top-rating breakfast show, unbeaten in a record 226 surveys, was no longer bringing in enough revenue in the wake of a series of controversies.

Nine was prepared to pay out more than $4m to the end of Jones’s contract in the middle of 2021. The bosses wanted Jones to go with dignity but they did need him to go.

After the meeting, sources told The Australian Jones spoke to Costello and Marks to check whether this really was the end. They backed the message hand-delivered by Malone.

After taking leave from his radio and TV gigs last week, Jones visited his doctors and was given another piece of advice. “Stop or you’ll drop,” was the unambiguous diagnosis.

Nine Entertainment is adamant Jones jumped, and was not pushed. His star power is still evident by a non-compete clause demanded by the network, which will see him unable to return to radio before July next year, should he so wish. Jones is allowed to increase his popular television appearances on Sky.

On Tuesday morning, Jones told listeners his age and health simply could not keep up with the job. “I have listened to the experts and I am taking this opportunity to indicate to my radio family that I will be retiring from radio at the end of this month. I guess after 35 years the full stop has to go in somewhere.”

He assured friends in an email that he would “be okay” and not having to wake up at 2.30am every day would “make a big difference”.

2GB radio celebrates 10 straight years as Sydney's number one radio station with Ray Hadley, Alan Jones and Ben Fordham.

Commercial concerns and increasing tension with Nine’s upper management have added considerable pressure on the veteran presenter in recent months, with one well-connected station insider telling The Australian that “Alan’s show was on life support well before he ever went to see a doctor”.

Jones’s enduring popularity had helped his show bring in about $12m each year in advertising but his revenue slumped by about 50 per cent in the past year after he told listeners in August that New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern should have “a sock shoved down her throat”.

Even though he later apologised on-air, more than 80 brands severed times with Jones’s program following a vocal boycott campaign, and failed to return even after the furore died down.

Data was leaked to Nine’s own Sydney Morning Herald in November last year in what could have been viewed as an internal destabilisation campaign against the broadcaster, reporting that the backlash against Jones could cost $6m.

Even before the onset of COVID-19 revenue had been falling off a cliff for Nine’s new radio asset.

Nine CEO Hugh Marks and Chairman Peter Costello at the Nine AGM in Sydney. Picture: John Feder

Marks had made specific mention at Nine’s AGM in November of the impact of the boycott against Jones — and made it clear Jones had been warned.

It was Costello who had talked Marks around to renewing Jones’s contract last year when other Macquarie board members and the former boss, Adam Lang, had wanted him gone and replaced with Hadley.

A list of controversies had began to mount, with Jones being forced to apologise for comments made to Sydney Opera House boss Louise Herron after he called for her to be sacked during an interview on-air after a dispute about a racing billboard on the Opera House sail.

In September 2018 Jones lost a defamation case to the Wagner family after the court found he had defamed them over the damage and lives lost in the 2011 Grantham floods, and ordered him to pay a record $3.7m.

Despite the controversies Marks had decided to keep Jones at the network.

Marks had already experienced the disaster of forcing Karl Stefanovic out, only to have him return, and could not risk another star leaving in controversial circumstances.

The manner of Jones’s ultimate departure enables the parties to leave on good terms – but it might not play out so well for Marks inside his network

“Even key executives who supported Marks until recently are now openly criticising him in front of staff,” one Nine insider told The Australian.

“It’s like a pack of wolves in here at Nine at the moment. Everyone is out for themselves.”