Tom Ballard to leave Triple J breakfast
Another long-running breakfast show partnership is being broken up with Tom Ballard announcing this morning he will host his final Triple J breakfast show on Friday 13th December.
Co-host Alex Dyson, who has presented the show with Ballard for the last four years, will remain as a breakfast host, with a new partner to be announced next Tuesday.
Ballard is the latest announcer to leave the morning time slot, with Kyle and Jackie O set to leave 2DayFM in Sydney, while Kate and Hughesy are departing Nova and Matt and Jo finishing at Fox in Melbourne among a raft of lineup changes across networks.
Ballard began broadcasting at Triple J when he was 17, taking over the breakfast show when he was 20. He is currently nominated for an ARIA Award for Tom & Alex: The Bits We’re Least Ashamed Of.
He said: “For the past seven years I’ve been paid to wake up with one of my best friends in the whole world, talk shit, wear zentai suits, laugh at my dad, drink instant coffee and play good music.
“It’s been the sweetest of gigs, but I feel like now’s the right time for me to try new things. This will give me an opportunity to focus on my real passions: standup comedy and not getting up at 4am. Thanks for everything, I feel extraordinarily lucky and I love you all very much.”
M’eh.
Ballard somehow comes across as both smug & insecure, and almost enirely unengaged with anything on the JJJ playlist; have a sinking feeling that the even less inspired Lewis McKirdy will be in his seat.
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I stopped listening to triple J when Tom and Alex started, I figured I was getting too old, the playlist wasn’t to my liking and I didn’t find Tom and Alex funny at all. I was saddened that I was finally too old for Triple J (don’t mess up Dig). Reluctantly I saw Tom in a stand-up routine and he was really good, so I look forward to more of his live stuff where he shines.
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Good riddance. His peurile try-hard comedy always left me cold. “Smug” accurately describes him as does “unfunny”..
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Come on Dave, Lewi is a good talent. Maybe you’ve out grown (aged) JJJ…
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I hope his Dad says on to do the album reviews.
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Alex, Kyle and Jackie O on JJJ in 2014? What a combo!
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Settle down Ted and turn back to SmoothFM. Bring on Lewis!
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After four years of being consistently unfunny to cringeworthy and at times offensive, I find it hard to believe that Ballard is leaving of his own accord. Either way, it’s long overdue.
Looking forward to JJJ in the mornings again
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A lot of negativity here but for the youth demo they were a brilliant team who their listeners were passionate about. Mornings won’t be the same
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Don’t get me wrong, Tom Ballard is not funny and that show was unlistenable, but that’s not the reason Triple J is failing its audience: it needs to start integrating the learnings of its market research into its product.
To explain: Triple J goes on and on about how credible and popular the Hottest 100 is – and I am sure it is both those things – so that means it should only be playing Aussie hip hop once every 100 songs, as that is how many times Aussie hip hop registered in its most recent countdown, yet every time I turn on Triple J I hear some uneducated and heavily tattoed bogan whining at me about how hard their life has been growing up Indooroopilly or some other shit.
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Tom is great. I cannot fathom the “smug” references from some posters here. Tom comes across as an open minded young lad who doesn’t take himself too seriously. I think he’s a pleasure to listen to.
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Can’t believe the negativity on this site! Have loved waking up to Tom and Alex and the music has been awesome. I’m going to miss his fun vibe in the morning.
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I love tom and Alex, showing my age but been listening to triple j breakfast since Helen and Mikey and I was in my 20s then. I lol every morning
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I’m 37 years old, perhaps not their target demographic, but I have to say Tom and Alex is probably the only breakfast shows I can listen to, better than whiny male or female voices, shitty gotcha calls which are considerably more cringeworthy than the stuff these guys say. Smug? At least he’s not some arrogant know it all like Kyle whether he is on inthe morning or not.
There are many people on radio far worse than this bloke.
I don’t always like the music, but it is a part of JJJ than I can listen to.
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Triple j’s target demo is 18 – 24. I kind of suspect that a number of the haters here are a bit older than that…might be time to move on, methinks?
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Can’t say I ever had a genuine laugh from these 2 guys. Particularly Tom…so am not too sad to see him go….however, as has been stated here…what else are u gunna listen to in the mornings!?!?!?
If JJJ could just learn to restrict the amount of Oz hip hop (an excruciatingly weak sub-genre of a fairly limited genre to begin with) they might start to turn the corner…
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Man who knows these things – legend!
That’s a pretty accurate (and humerous) comment.
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