There have been further changes at 3AK since Derryn Hinch’s sacking just before Christmas. Overnight presenters Jill Rogers (weekends) and Leigh Drew (weekdays) have been sacked and Greg Evans has also departed from the station lineup.
Commenting on his sacking on hinch.net, Derryn Hinch had a few stories to tell about his former employers. He recounts several anecdotes, including:
It was a strange question. A vulgar and insulting question. But it was, perhaps, indicative of the ignorant crassness of the boofheads who inhabited the executive offices of the radio station from which I have recently been ejected.
“What do those sluts in the Hinch office do after he gets off air?”
The “sluts” were the two hard-working female producers who had been in my office since 6a.m., poring through newspapers, the news agencies and the Internet and hitting the phones to drag people out of bed for possible interviews on the Hinch programme. Then manning the post and the phones for three and a half hours of live, controversial, high-pressure radio.
The radio “expert” executive thought they should also kick in and do a couple more hours on the road as roaming radio journalists “to get our logo on the six o ‘clock TV news”.
The article later commented on the role Hinch thought 3AK would play in the Melbourne talk radio landscape:
Welcome to the Richmond Follies. Welcome to Talk 1116- 3AK, the station that recruited some big names to take on the commercial giants at 3AW. And sadly fell on a self-made rusty sword.
This truly is a “more in sorrow than in anger” report on my swansong from Swan Street. I am a serious shareholder in the company that owns 3AK and sister station 3MP. I bought shares in Data and Commerce at 30 cents and saw them drop to less than eight cents this week. Immodestly I believe my sacking will push the price even lower.
I also have a million options in the company. Options, I suspect, that will eventually be more effective papering the latrine.
But my melancholia about AK has nothing to do with share prices. It has more to do with what I said a year ago when they sacked me for the first time. I passionately believed in what a few of us set out to achieve. To provide an alternative voice in a major, sophisticated city. A city which can, and should, have two competitive commercial talk stations…
For the first time in yonks AW has been vulnerable, takeable. If the droning, pedantic, ABC can knock off AW imagine the window of opportunity for a sharp and snappy and professional commercial station?
Mitchell is tired, Sigley has stayed too long at the fair and Zemanek, the red-necked rooster, is a one-trick pony. Even the top-rating breakfast programme has problems because Ross Stevenson treads on his new sidekick if he dares open his mouth.