An early morning phone call from your breakfast presenter is the last thing a Content Director wants to hear.
But 2GB’s Head of Content Greg Byrnes found that an early call from Ben Fordham this week wasn’t as bad as he expected.
Byrnes and Fordham are both in Paris covering the Olympic Games. In the early call Fordham invited Byrnes to join him on an early morning bike ride across Paris. No lycra, no helmets, just a couple of blokes on hired Lime bikes cycling around the sights. “Don’t tell Jodie I wasn’t wearing a helmet,” Fordham joked as he and Byrnes talked on air about the few moments of relaxation amidst the extra workload of doing on OB from a different country.
6am Sydney time is 10pm Paris time, so it would have been a long day for them both after the early Paris-time start
Fordham credits Byrnes, a former news reporter and reader, for mentoring him as an 18 year old in his first radio work experience job. “Do you miss being on the microphone,” Fordham asked Byrnes as they ended their chat. “No I don’t,” replied Byrnes.
Meanwhile, Ray Hadley is one of the Nine Radio network’s main callers for events such as swimming. The behind the scenes excitement of Hadley’s call of the 4x200m freestyle relay team wining gold and Libby Tricket’s ‘can’t sit still’ tearful excitement was captured on this video posted on 2GB’s social page.
While journalists and Nine Entertainment’s publishing division (SMH and The Age) were striking and CEO Mike Sneezby was carrying the Olympic torch, the radio teams were pushing out Olympic coverage across the radio network.
Gold for Radio!
Protest poster from the MEAA Nine campaign
Nine’s television coverage has also been scoring gold, with big viewership numbers since the Olympics began on both the free to air and the catchup video on demand (BVOD) platforms.
The 9Network’s Thursday broadcast of the Olympic Games Paris 2024 (up until 2.00am Thursday AEST) achieved a National Total TV Reach of 9.407 million across Channel 9, 9Gem and 9Now.
Olympic Games Paris 2024 Day 6 Night Session (19:00-21:00) was the No. 1 program across Australia with Total People and all key demos. It secured a National Total TV Reach of 3.954 million, a Total TV National Audience of 1.706 million and a BVOD audience of 219,000. In this session, viewers watched as Australian Jemima Montag won bronze in the Women’s 20km Race Walk.
The 9Network was the No. 1 network across the 5 City Metro with Total People and all key demos. 9Now was the No. 1 CFTA BVOD platform across Australia with Total People and all key demos, climbing to shares of 81.66% with People 25-54, 84.00% with People 16-39, 79.01% with GS18+ and 79.63% with Total People.