The original gang who were signed up for The Long Weekend were Karl Stefanovic and Eddie McGuire as hosts, Toni Tenaglia anchoring, Georgia Love with the news and Sacha French EP. It would air live from 12-3pm on a Friday through ARN‘s Gold Network, audio streamed globally with iHeart, video on 9Now and Stan in collaboration with Nine Entertainment, as well as on socials and YouTube. Chemist Warehouse was the launch partner.
Karl would continue doing his independent The Karl Stefanovic Show podcast, and Eddie, his Eddie and Jimmy one, which had moved to Tapt Media podcasts when Nine sold their audio arm to the Laundy family. ARN and McGuire Media had also agreed to collaborate on a new, yet to be named, sport-focused iHeart original podcast series.
The show launched a week earlier than slated, on June 12. With hindsight now, that was probably to give Karl Stefanovic more than one week in the chair before a planned trip to the UK, during a break from Today, the Nine TV breakfast show he had co-hosted for 20 years.
This is one of the things that still doesn’t add up. Even though Karl had parted ways with Nine by the time the third Friday show, on June 26, aired, he had been in the UK all that week and certainly wasn’t going to be live and in the studio anyway.
Eddie said that he would have an exclusive chat with Karl the following Friday but by that date, July 3, ARN and Karl had parted ways too.
July 3 and 10’s Long Weekend fell in a non radio survey period.
Eddie hosted solo, with greater input from Toni and Georgia. 9Now and Stan are no longer involved.
That bring us to this Friday, which will be measured in GfK Survey 5 (GfK Survey 4 is out on Tuesday July 13).
I listened to a fair bit of Friday July 10’s show, to see what Eddie would say in tribute to Derryn Hinch. But if he said anything, I missed it, and when I went to the catch up podcast later, there wasn’t one.
There has been no upload of the Long Weekend to YouTube, iHeart or ‘your preferred podcast platform’, since June 26, pre ARN definitively dropping Karl. Eddie hasn’t been on his Eddie and Jimmy podcast since June 25 either. Jimmy Bartel has been accompanied by Sam Docherty.
We’ve got a survey to get out of the way first, but it feels like there’s news looming on the future of The Long Weekend, and the remaining bits and pieces left of it.
It’s certainly not what ARN bought into, or in reality Eddie McGuire.
Jen Seyderhelm is a writer, editor and podcaster for Radioinfo. Email: [email protected]. You can subscribe to this publication for just $199 per annum (less for community stations, students and pensioners) and support local media. Celebrate Radioinfo in its 30th year.