Adelaide is the anomaly to the other metros in that it doesn’t have a Nine Radio station. What is does have, to compete with the ABC, is FIVEaa, the only talk radio station that NOVA Entertainment owns. The station did very well in the recent GfK Radio 360 Survey 8.
While all eyes, understandably, have been on the sale of Nine’s radio assets, in the end to pub and hotelier family the Laundy‘s, FIVEaa has quietly been doing some forward planning themselves.
First they’ve picked up Kate Collins to join their breakfast news reading team. Collins was let go from Channel 9 in November last year after nearly two decades delivering Adelaide’s nightly news, a decision unpopular with the viewers but treated with grace by Kate – see below.
Now, launching tomorrow, February 2, is a new early breakfast show on the station hosted by Ned McHenry and Sam Daddow from 5-6am. These two young men, Ned a 25-year-old former Adelaide Crows player, and Sam who has been a producer and announcer with the station for five years, are being given the opportunity to be a voice to a demographic talk radio has few other exponents of and creating future options for the station when cover is required, like Afternoon presenter Stacey Lee who was on maternity leave last year. Sam cut his teeth as the producer of Jon Blake in the evenings, before assisting with and on virtually all the shows on the station and running the early breakfast show by himself.
Nova appears to give opportunities to staff who have proven themselves committed to the network with their own shows – Luisa Dal Din and Jack Archdale, both now at Triple M, are one example, and Jess McNally and Chae Rogan, networked Sunday nights on the music stations, are another.
Ned and Sam get to work together in the sparrow fart hours and find what works for them. I hope (except from the early alarms point of view) the show is live and they get to interact with listeners and callers in real time. There might also be some tips in there for the Laundy family.
Jen Seyderhelm is a writer, editor and podcaster for Radioinfo. Email: [email protected]
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Nine’s radio assets sold to Laundy consortium for $56 million