Having been there from the day Hot Tomato was launched, Program Director and breakfast anchor, Rob McCasker was fired by email at 4:30 pm last Friday after five years at the Gold Coast station. McCasker told radioinfo, “I was boned late Friday. The email simply told me that my services at Hot Tomato were no longer required. A great start the to weekend!”

When asked what led to the dismissal, McCasker was reluctant to elaborate except to say, “Last week was a very difficult week, but the immediacy of the termination came as a complete shock. I can’t tell you more at this stage except to say that the matter is with my lawyers.

Management, who are also believed to be under lawyers’ instructions remained tight lipped over the affair except to say that that the PD position at Hot Tomato is now vacant and they are looking to fill the position ASAP.

The situation in breakfast is certainly going to be difficult as it was only last week that the station reported that another member of the breakfast crew, Renae King was leaving The Luke, Rob and Renae Show to pursue other plans and concentrate more on motherhood. That leaves just Luke to, presumably, talk amongst himself.

“This is the first time in my 20+ year career that I’ve ever been fired and without a job. I’ve got my wife and four kids to think about,” McCasker said. He was previously PD at Melbourne’s FOX-FM, having been at Austereo for 13 years.

Although Hot Tomato has never come close to toppling its Macquarie flagship rivals, McCasker insists that his sacking has nothing to do with ratings. In the latest Nielsen Media Research book that came out at the beginning of this month, Hot Tomato had a healthy 1.1 increase to bring the station to a 12.6 share into third place ahead of the ABC and behind Gold-FM (20.6) and Sea-FM (15.5) respectively.