Comment by Anthony Dockrill
The word giant is often used to describe someone’s achievements but rarely has it been so accurate, bordering on understatement, in regards to this man. John Laws was a true radio giant in a time when the industry was full of giants and helped shape media in this country. Bert Newton, Graham Kennedy, Mike Walsh – these were all names that came from radio. John Laws was a giant even in that company that remained in the world of radio. He did dabble in other media but it was all a bit like Dennis Lillee playing golf, we all knew where he belonged.
He helped pioneer talk radio, a format alive and dominant today. His version in his prime was more free-wheeling and fun than today’s conservative soapbox version. That’s not to say John didn’t lecture or nudge his listeners, but the obvious ideological string-pulling was not John’s game. John was more about the centre and less concerned with identity politics or culture war shenanigans that now make up the boiling cauldron of talk radio.
He shared frequencies with the likes of Carlton and Jones. The later was not a happy marriage – and Laws had few of those. Perhaps Jones in the end rose higher, but he also fell faster and far harder than Laws ever did, who had a jolly semi-retirement on 2SM.
His success did go to his head. How could it not? He famously opened his show with “Hello world, this is John Laws” – a stretch for 2UE even at its peak. He was only human after all, and he showed this all-too-human side in several books of poetry, so wretched that Andrew Denton often took pleasure in reading from them. He entered popular culture with Steve Vizard sending up his Valvoline commercials, and his voice was instantly recognisable even to people who never turned on their AM radio.
His final legacy is helping develop radio craft today that is so built into the industry’s DNA we don’t even notice it.
One of the true giants is now gone. Radio, as always, has time to fill and has no time to get maudlin, but it misses these giants more than it knows.
Anthony Dockrill is a Digital Producer at Pod Jam and the former Program Director of 2SER FM Sydney.
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