John Laws returns to work today to face a new challenger for the ears of his regional listeners, Charles Wooley.

While Laws’ Sydney audience has been under attack for some time from rival talk station 2GB, his regional audience has been stable until now.

Laws told radioinfo some time ago his regional audience was very important to him. Certainly Laws is very important to them, scoring high ratings in most markets, uniting listeners around the country, and bringing in significant revenue to stations which take the program.

Wooley program producer Richard Perno thinks the regional focus of the program will give it the edge. He told radioinfo:

“We won’t pretend we’re on another planet talking down to regional markets, we will be able to cover metro content but we have no need to be focused on the ratings of Sydney or Melbourne to be successful… We will be able to cover the Cronulla riots and things like that, but we will connect the dots with regional audiences and tell them how events such as that are relevant to them.”

Both programs begin on air for 2006 today.