SCA’s Triple M Network has 40 radio stations across Australia. With the announcement last week that the network will now have two national drive programs, Marty Sheargold (pictured) across NSW and Queensland, and James ‘JB’ Brayshaw and Billy Brownless in Victoria, South Australia, Western Australia and Tasmania, those state’s capital cities, except Sydney and Melbourne, have lost one of the only remaining live and local drive shows on a commercial music station.

If commercial radio networks are not prepared to offer live and local anymore, then what is radio’s point of difference?

Triple M Drive shows in the last three months have let go Andrew Jarman, Bernie Vince and Greg Blewett in Adelaide (Bernie is heading to SCA’s SAFM breakfast), Andrew Embley and Katie Lamb in Perth (Katie is going to Triple M Perth Breakfast after the departure of Michelle Anderson), Gus Worland and Jude Bolton in Sydney (Gus will still be involved with the station), Annabelle ‘A.B’ Brett and Elliott Lovejoy from regional Queensland (A.B who just won an ACRA as a regional sports presenter and is currently on maternity leave) and finally Liam Flanagan, Leisel Jones and Ben “Dobbo” Dobbin from Triple M Brisbane.

That’s 10 people gone from SCA and Triple M, if I include Michelle Anderson, and all the women who had a voice on Drive. That will also represent a significant saving when SCA releases their Q2 FY25 market update, after they shared Q1 a couple of days before the Drive show announcements.

Over the weekend I went through the radio stations in Brisbane in GfK Survey 6, and their respective drive programs to see how many were live and local:

4BC 882: Interim but YES live and local Nine Radio host Gary Hardgrave who is in the chair till the end of 2024 after the departure of Peter Gleeson in September. Interim breakfast show at present too.

4BH 1116: Cathy Jubb. Cathy works out of Melbourne and does afternoons and drive for the Ace Radio Network for 3MP, 2UE and 4BH. Not local, and probably not entirely live.

SENQ: They will be broadcasting the cricket ODIs between Australia and Pakistan this week live across SEN stations nation wide. Other days it looks like Jo Healy and Michelle Bishop do a drive program out of Sydney.

B105: Carrie and Tommy from the Hit Network. Not local. Top rating on Drive in Brisbane Survey 6.

KIIS 97.3: ARN and KIIS Network’s Will and Woody. Not local.

104.5 Triple M -see above. It is currently the live and local Leisel Jones, Liam and Dobbo. In 2025 it will be Marty Sheargold, and a delayed feed.

Nova 106.9: Nova Network’s Ricki-Lee, Tim and Joel. Not local. Second in drive in GfK Survey 6.

ABC Brisbane: YES live and local with Kelly Higgins-Devine

ABC Radio National: Andy Park – national program

ABC News Radio – national

4JJJ – National drive with with Tyrone Pynor and Abby Butler

ABC Classic: National drive with Vanessa Hughes

The only two surveyed stations who are providing a live drive program locally delivered to and for a Brisbane audience specifically in 2025 are the ABC and 4BC.

Are you as astonished as I was?

Obviously wherever the shows come from they have state and city specific news and traffic among the network and national content. But this is where we are at the end of 2024. Where Brisbane, Perth and Adelaide mostly only have talk based local drive programs. And listeners are apparently cool with that.

Unpacking Triple M’s decision further, Brisbane is currently an hour behind Sydney and Melbourne and it will remain that way until Daylight Savings ends on April 6, 2025. Marty Sheargold will broadcast to Brisbane on delay, so they get his show an hour later than NSW.

JB and Billy’s drive show will only begin in Western Australia after it has already finished in Victoria.

Imagine if JB and Billy are talking about how the breaking news about a new AFL coach of the West Coast Eagles, Andrew McQualter (he is incidentally, as of October 1). Let’s say this news breaks at 4pm Melbourne time. By the time JB and Billy speak about it to their WA audience it will be old and probably a feature of several news bulletins already.

If this announcement was made at 4pm Perth time, JB and Billy won’t have any mention of it in their show at all.

When you are speaking to audiences across Perth, Victoria, South Australia and Hobart you have to keep your content pretty generic or you alienate a portion who have no point of reference as to what you’re talking about. Competitions and live events will be a different proposition now too.

Additionally, as Marty Sheargold lives in Victoria, and will continue to do his 3-4pm national podcast, I don’t think that his drive show will be live from the Triple M studios of Sydney or Brisbane either.

We saw how it worked for SCA’s 2Day FM Sydney breakfast team when Dave Hughes and Ed Kavalee got tired of the time away from their homes and families in Victoria. It seems unfathomable that SCA thinks that it will be okay to do a drive show for NSW and all of Queensland from a host who doesn’t even live in either of those states.

At the ACRAs Liam McGuire, who is Ben Fordham’s 2GB Sydney breakfast show executive producer told me that on Saturday April 13, 2024, Ben’s day off, while he was out and about with family, he started to get messages about a situation unfolding at the Westfield in Bondi Junction.

He called the Continuous Call Team who were live at a game at Parramatta and had them interrupt the call to let listeners know as much as he knew.

Then he headed into 2GB to answer calls, assist with the news team to provide updates and be a voice to allow not just Sydneysiders but all of Australia process the horrible events of that day.

I hate the thought that on a day when everything changes for a state or territory, they might tune into their favourite station and hear “this is a story to make you laugh” on delay, or prerecorded banter, not a live and local voice to help make sense of a situation.

That’s the point of difference of radio.

Jen Seyderhelm is a writer, editor and podcaster for Radioinfo