Vale Geoff Marshall

Geoff Marshall has passed away in Sydney from complications of dementia, aged 88.

Geoff worked as an announcer at 2RG Griffith, 2NX Newcastle and in Sydney at 2UE and 2CH.

He was known for his versatility in being able to present any music or talk shift and for his warm mellow voice, which was the voice of 2UE news for many years.

Long time friend Chris Maitland has told radioinfo: “Geoff worked for only 4 stations in his career, starting at 2RG Griffith in 1951 and being headhunted to 2NX Newcastle a year later. He joined 2UE in the early 1960s, where he stayed until the ill-fated era of Packer/Bond ownership. Geoff was persuaded to try 2CH in 1987 but wasn’t comfortable in the tight rigid format that existed there at that time, so he chose to retire at 55.”

Colleagues have remembered him as a thoroughly professional radio industry stalwart, who had a good sense of humour and retained his calm under pressured situations, such as the very busy weekend racing and sports shifts, which he presented on 2UE for many years.

He would always fill in for ‘the big three’ top personalities of Sydney radio in the 1970s and 80s: Gary O’Callaghan, Bob Rogers, and John Laws.
 

In his memoir Australian Old Time Radio, Alan Black recounts some early talk back shifts hosted by Geoff Marshall, at a time before phone calls could be put to air live.

Soundabout hosted by staff announcer Geoff Marshall went like this, at 12.30pm at the start of the program, Geoff asked the listeners a ‘Soundabout question of the day’ and invited everyone to phone in to record their comments. They could call a new 2UE phone number patched to a special switchboard with a switch girl, set up in sales manager Bruce Rogersons office, at the rear of the 4th floor.
 
I was set up in Studio C booth with a telephone and 2 Byer tape recorders, and our switch girl put each caller through to me. I had 5″ rolls of tape each cut to exactly 2mins. in length. I would ask for the callers name and suburb, tell them what was going to happen, start the recorder and tell them to start their comments.  I didn’t interrupt them but if the caller was still talking 2 mins later, the tape ran into the white leader tape and the recording finished. I’d thank the caller, hang up, look for suitable closing remarks at the end of the tape, and erase it from there to the leader.
 
After filling out numbered cue sheets for Geoff and his operator, I’d record one more caller and race the tapes to B booth for broadcast between the blocks of 4 ads. Geoff repeated the ‘question’ then b/cast the callers comments, while I recorded more. This went on for the duration of the program and I believe sister station 2KO in Newcastle, also broadcast their own new Soundabout program. Does anyone remember that?
 
This was all brand new, allowing anybody to talk on the radio, and some of the older generation announcers didn’t like it one bit. Today talkback radio hosts have to be more than just ‘announcers’ listening, commenting and conversing with all callers, but back then some of the established older generation just couldn’t cope with it.
 
Before things settled down, various incidents happened. First of all, for the ‘question of the day’, we quickly learned to avoid politics like the plague. Some listeners would get angry at a caller they heard and phone in wanting to talk to ‘that person’ I had to explain what was happening, but a few really angry ones said they were going to come into the studio, have it out with that ‘insane idiot’ and bust me for letting them get on the wireless. So we stopped taking any political subjects altogether, and considered employing a security guard on the ground floor to vet people going up to our studios on the 4th floor.
 
But we could all tell Soundabout was going to be big. Another problem was, if 6 callers rang in together, the last one would have to wait about 15 minutes before they were attended to, and some either forgot what they were going to say, or had just hung up. So the ‘question’ had to be a good one.

 

Tributes to Geoff on facebook include

Steve Liebmann One of the nicest, unassuming, thoroughly professional persons I had the pleasure to work with in my days it 2UE.

Peter Bosly A nice man with a great voice. He made my early days at 2UE so much easier.

 

 

 

 


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