SCA’s Hit Network cuts 19 regional breakfast shows
Southern Cross Austereo (SCA) has cut 19 regional breakfast shows across its network, replacing them with a statewide breakfast show.
The model replicates what The Hit Network does in Western Australia and will begin from Monday, 24 August.
The NSW statewide breakfast show will be hosted by Daniel Gawned and Ash Pollard, broadcast from Hit 101.3 Central Coast. Newcastle will still have its own breakfast program, as will the metro stations.
In Victoria, broadcast from Hit 104.9 in Albury, the Tim & Jess breakfast show with Tim Bolch and Jess Pantou will expand to be on air across all regional Victorian Hit stations.
In Queensland, on SCA’s Hit regional stations, the Cliffo & Gabi breakfast show with Guy Clifton and Gabi Elgood will now be heard statewide and broadcast from Hit 103.1 Townsville. The Gold Coast will continue to have its own local breakfast.
In South Australia, the new SAFM Adelaide breakfast show, Bec, Cosi & Lehmo with Rebecca Morse, Andrew Costello and Anthony Lehmann will be heard on the recently rebranded SAFM in Mount Gambier.
Hit in regional Western Australia continues to broadcast the statewide Allan & Michelle breakfast show with Allan Aldsworth and Michelle Anderson. Hobart will also remain unchanged.
The impacted breakfast hosts are being redeployed where possible, but some will leave the network.
SCA chief content officer, Dave Cameron, said the station was doing what it could to weather COVID-19.
“SCA has adapted to the challenges presented by the COVID-19 environment and will deliver a different programming model across our Hit regional network. The changes will mean that unfortunately a number of our local breakfast shows will be impacted, and we would like to thank our dedicated and talented people who are affected today by this new approach,” he said.
“The new model brings listeners quality state breakfast shows for Queensland, New South Wales, Victoria, South Australia and Western Australia that deliver on our new content strategy of fun, entertaining breakfast shows overlaying our broader pop music format nationally.
“In addition, we will now return to local morning announcers across a majority of our regional Hit stations, which were previously nationally networked. This will continue to ensure that we maintain our commitment to broadcast the best local, state and national content that matters to our listeners.
“SCA’s national Triple M network of stations will continue to remain dedicated to everything local by broadcasting our existing locally-based and focussed breakfast shows across our 38 regional Triple M communities.”
The decision to cut across the breakfast shows follows a rebrand for the network last month which saw Adelaide and Brisbane return to heritage brands.
What seems to forgotten in this whole disgrace is the Southern Cross Media (Regional Radio) saved Austereo in July 2011 when the highly successful regional Radio and TV company bought them out and restructured the business. Regional Radio was always writing more money than its metro counterparts – why? Regional radio’s strengths is and was its hyper-localism and efficiencies when it came to multi-skilled workers. It’s great to have successful metro shows – but the funding and extras for those shows came from regional revenue…..
Current management just does not get it –
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This company obviously has no clue about the localism of regional radio. 2 lost listeners right here, and I am changing to advertise with a rival local station, not a remote one.
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