Lee & Jess get to 5 years at Sea FM Tasmania

Sea FM’s Lee & Jess for Breakfast celebrated five years on air together this week, reaching the milestone Monday, on 107.7 Sea FM Devonport and 101.7 Sea FM Burnie.

The pair regularly host community and charity events and are the faces of Sea FM’s annual Koinz 4 Kidz fundraiser.

Their ACRA nominations include, 2018 ACRA – Best Community Service Project (Lee and Jess’s Koinz 4 Kidz) and 2016 ACRA – Best Newcomer on air (Jess Bennett).

They describe their on-air relationship as an arranged marriage success story, saying they’ve even developed a dialogue that no longer requires actual words and can now finish each other’s sentences in and out of the studio.

On the challenges of working breakfast radio, Lee says motherhood for Jess threw a spanner in the works and he has had to pick up the pieces when she has been “unavailable” or simply needed an extra hours sleep.

radioinfo: What about the benefits?
Lee & Jess: Five years may not seem a long time but when you get to see families who are part of the SeaFM family come and go and watch their children grow up you realize we’ve actually been here quite a while. Our listeners tell us we “keep it real” and “…that they can’t imagine their morning without us” which is great for Lee’s ego.

radioinfo: What makes it work?
Lee & Jess: We are both on the same page. We have the same sense of humor and for anyone who’s worked in a duo where that hasn’t been a commonality – the struggle is real. We don’t put any pressure on ourselves to be anything that we are not. Our audience would know if we weren’t being genuine.

 radioinfo: Biggest moment onair so far?
Lee & Jess: Oh yeah, that day Jess staged a demo for a game of True or False Tuesday “for the boss” that turned out to be her pregnancy announcement. The first and only time she has made Lee cry on air, that she knows of.

radioinfo: 5 years in regional radio is the sign of what could be a long partnership, so why do you think it has lasted?
Lee & Jess: We started out at mates from the beginning and soon learnt that cheese and wine was best consumed during daylight hours. The longer we do this together the harder it’s becoming to imagine pairing up with someone else. We’ve also become incredibly local. The coast is our home too and the listeners respect that.

 
 
 

Advertisement

 

Tags: | |