Jon Faine and Richard Glover appear to be the untouchables in ABC radio’s new line-up for next year.
The major metro markets are moving to shared breakfast and morning presenter models — in Sydney and Brisbane, two hosts will present from 6am to 10am. In Melbourne, Red Symons’ breakfast slot will be filled by Jacinta Parsons and Sami Shah until 7.45am, and Melbourne mornings presenter Jon Faine will maintain his solo slot after AM finishes at 8.30am, meaning Melbourne won’t get the new capital city mid-morning program called Focus, which the ABC says will draw on the ABC’s specialist genre reporters and industry experts.
Also keeping his slot is Sydney’s afternoons presenter, Richard Glover.
In Canberra and Adelaide, the breakfast and mornings presenters will have a half-hour cross-over between programs — a format that has been trialled in Adelaide since long-time breakfast due Matthew Abraham and David Bevan split, with Abraham leaving the ABC and Bevan moving to mornings.
Symons shocked his listeners last week by announcing the ABC no longer wanted him in the job after 15 years, and Canberra’s Genevieve Jacobs has also said she’s been made redundant to free up her time-slot.
But most controversially, the new schedule has cut by half flagship current affairs programs The World Today and PM. TWT‘s presenter Eleanor Hall has been outspoken about the decision on Twitter, saying it was a shame the ABC was cutting the “quality, high rating shows”, and that ABC management didn’t value the programs. Linda Mottram will be the new host of PM, replacing Mark Colvin, who died last year.
In an email to staff yesterday, head of news Gaven Morris said there would be no job cuts, cost cuts of changes in the amount of content with the change in length.
“For a long time now, audience listening habits in the afternoons and evenings have been changing, in PM‘s traditional 6pm-7pm time-slot we have seen a more than 20% decline in audience share and 25% decline in reach in the past five years. While the in-depth journalism PM provides remains as important as ever, clearly listeners are telling us they want to get this information in different ways,” he said.
Morris said the shorter programs would give reporters more time to develop and chase their stories and give audiences more value. He also said local Drive programs would have a greater focus on local current affairs, and would have more news input than they previously have had.
The ABC announced an enormous organisational restructure last month, which will organise staff by genre, rather than the current “silos” divided by platform. Managing director Michelle Guthrie said it was part of her attempt to make the public broadcaster more fit to reach Australians in all demographics in a time where the media landscape is dramatically changing.
Also keeping his highly successful spot is Richard Fidler in Brisbane, broadcast nationally at 11am. Rightly so as he’s Australia best interviewer.
I’ll take refuge behind a shield before making this next observation: the Queensland lineup is predominantly female. Markedly.
Second best. Phil Adams, despite the overweening insecurities, is far and above the best.
LNL is my fave. Big Ideas is often but not always great and the same with R.F. in Conversation but someone should just shoot Tom Shitzyer.
In SEQ I listen to Radio National on FM 69.9. I didn’t know there was a one hour PM. Here, PM (presented by Dominique Schwartz) is a half hour program from 5pm (after a replay of LNL) and the other half hour to 6pm is generally a fill-in one can hear often repeated; on Fridays it is a children’s program called “Download this show” – or at least it seems to be presented by children. The Drive program with PK starts at 6pm – allowing for daylight saving when applicable.
Yes many of the people howling about Radio National dumbing down have failed to notice that RN cut its version of PM to 30 minutes several years ago. It’s almost like they are not regular listeners….
Eleanor Hall is a class act. One or two RN big current affairs women are not. Fidler is a wonderful long interviewer. As to RN dumbing down three Life Matters a day is one too many, almost all contemporary music has gone and the sheer vapidity and stupidity of Sunday mornings is a disgrace. I am all for women presenters if they are good enough but there are too many on RN who are not. We could get rid of the blithering Tom Switzer as well. I like conservative thinkers, not neocon twerps.
Er, Tom Switzer left months ago. It was reported in Crikey.
I am all for male commenters if they are good enough, but there are too many online who are not.
The Sweaty one is still on RN doing his radio version of FUX in Between the Lies… err Lines though, come to think of it, stet.
What the fuck has gender got to do with it?
There are so many shit presenters on RN, and more coming, and you’re obsessing about genitalia???
Sooo, if I have grokked this cunning plan correctly, the idea seems to be to irritate, disgust and render comatose the current RN audience so that they will flee.
Into which vacuum will flock… who/what exactly?
It seems to be a reverse of the (Wayne’s World?) idea, “build it and they will come” – destroy RN and leave a smoking ruin and ..err.. that’s all folks.
Jon Faine ‘untouchable’? Still? As a then ABC program director, I was part of team tasked to shortlist finalists for internal ABC Local Radio Awards. The team was shocked on the night of the awards when Jon Faine was announced the winner of a category for which none of the team had shortlisted Faine’s entry. ABC Local Radio senior management in Melbourne had stepped in to prop up the untouchable.
He’s recently taken to bragging on air that he gets paid more than Leigh Sales. Apparently this is because, “every year I threaten to pull the pin and they offer me another twenty grand”. I’m surprised his ego still fits into the studio.
I believe the reason listeners are turning away from ABC news is because the ABC has been turned into a propaganda arm of the Coalition government. Listeners are seeking the facts, not Liberal propaganda.
….their ABC.