“You are my company during the night when I can’t sleep” – That was one of the literally thousands of comments on Triple M’s The Night Shift‘s social media pages with the news yesterday that it was Luke Bona‘s last night after redundancies at SCA.

While many networks have replaced live overnight programs with non stop music or catch up radio, Triple M was an anomaly. Not only was midnight to dawn live, but it was also a talk show and, based on the feedback, a continual shining light through the darkness. Luke was networked right across Australia.

I met Tom Denham, Luke’s producer for the last two years, over the Christmas break. Rarely do I encounter people who are so palpably in the right professional space. He loved his role, the audience, the opportunities, the guests and the way Luke brought all of it together. Clearly the feeling is mutual. I have never before seen such an outpouring of emotion towards a radio show, on social media.

In one of my earliest podcast courses I had a man attend, a University professor, who was losing his sight through a degenerative condition. Like the person above he told me there are nights where he can’t find rest. He too turned to podcasts and radio because, “it reminds me that I’m not alone.”

My high school best friend, when her mind buzzed, would turn on 2UE and the late, great Stan Zemanek, calling him several times across her teenage years and telling me how great it felt to be able to chat with someone who listened.

There is something magical about overnight talk back and the secrets and stories it reveals.

Increasingly, in the daylight hours, people prefer to text in their message to a radio station rather than call. Overnight, it’s the opposite. Simon Owens who hosts Remember When on 3AW, from 9pm till midnight on Sundays, told me that they have an average of around 50 callers go to air each show. The weeks with less than that are only due to time and a topic that requires a longer and deeper answer, like tell us about your first home rather than what’s your favourite Frank Sinatra track.

With the loss of Luke, I am hoping that another commercial network might be brave enough to gamble on a new, live overnight show themselves. I recognise the costs involved in these challenging times but there is an audience out there, one that we don’t see reflected on the publicly released GfK survey results but one that will call in, and buy in, to the show and community.

That said, there is one just about to do that, when a certain Ugly Phil joins Nine Radio. Phil, who took his morning show to the top of the Sydney ratings, wraps up on Gold 101.7 next Friday, February 28 with Overnights with Phil O’Neil to be heard Tuesday to Fridays on Sydney’s 2GB and Brisbane’s 4BC from Tuesday March 4.

Jen Seyderhelm is a writer, editor and podcaster for Radioinfo. Email: [email protected]