Wil Anderson leaves Melbourne’s Triple M Hot Breakfast
The end-of-year radio shake-ups are continuing, with Wil Anderson announcing on-air this morning that he was finishing up on Triple M’s Hot Breakfast.
He said he is leaving the Southern Cross Austereo-owned station to pursue other projects, including touring his stand-up comedy, next year’s season of Gruen on the ABC and his podcast.
"I could not have felt more included here, from top to bottom…thank you very much to you guys, thank you very much to the Triple M family and the Triple M audience."
Wil Anderson bid an emotional farewell to @mmmhotbreakfast this morning.
LISTEN HERE: https://t.co/FBZORjeF4a pic.twitter.com/OoTKS3zP2H
— Triple M Melbourne 105.1 (@TripleMMelb) December 5, 2019
Anderson has fronted the show for two years alongside co-hosts Eddie McGuire and Luke Darcy. He replaced Mick Molloy who moved into the drive slot alongside Jane Kennedy.
In the most recent radio ratings survey, Triple M in Melbourne had a 5.5% share in breakfast, back 0.5 ratings points from the previous survey.
This put it behind SCA stablemate Fox FM, which commanded 8.7%, as well as Nova Entertainment’s Smooth 91.5 (7.6%) and Nova 100 (8.1%). It was also behind new FM market leader, Christian O’Connell on Gold FM who had 9.1%. It was, however, ever-so-slightly ahead of Australian Radio Network’s (ARN) Kiis 101.1, which struggled on 5.4%.
Anderson was full of praise for the show, its on-air team, and its behind-the-scenes operators.
“Two odd years ago when Ed [McGuire] came to me to ask me to be part of the Hot Breakfast, it was one of the great thrills of my life, to be honest,” he said on air. “I was such a huge fan of the show coming into it and I will be an even bigger fan leaving it, because today’s my last day on the Hot Breakfast.
“It was an amazing challenge when I first came in to fill the shoes of Mick Molloy, who is a great hero of mine and one of the greatest comedic and radio talents in the country. I was nervous about it, you know, walking into a building where he is so beloved and talking to an audience in Melbourne where he is incredibly beloved.
“But I could not have felt more included here, from top to bottom. The management here in the building are absolutely incredible to me, the off-air support I have got from the digital team, from the music team, the sales team, everybody in this office has just been 100% behind me and the things that I wanted to do here at station.”
Co-hosts McGuire and Darcy in turn praised Anderson for his professionalism, dedication and generosity of spirit. McGuire said with Anderson what you see is what you get, and he’d made a life-long friend from their time on air together.
Triple M also wished him well: “Everyone at Triple M would like to thank Wil for two amazing years on the Hot Breakfast and wish him all the very best for the future.”
Anderson’s departure is the latest in a busy end-of-year period for the commercial radio networks.
Earlier this week, Triple M’s parent company SCA made around 90 people redundant – including Hit Network’s head of music Irene Hulme and Australia By Night’s Stephen Cenatiempo – as it battles tough market conditions.
ARN also had a few redundancies and announced two members of its Brisbane breakfast team in 97.3 FM – Bianca Dye and Mike Van Acker – were leaving the program. ARN’s content director for WS FM Scott Muller will also not be returning after his contract expired, however his role will be replaced.
So was he made redundant?
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Curious that he joined the show two years ago when he actually ran out of material 10 years ago.
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Great operator Wil, love him on Gruen
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When your values are completely misaligned with the show’s marquee host… but the network won’t let you say that
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Yay, Bout time, just a pot stirring whingy wanna be try hard not funny at all boy with zero material, just slagging off anything that he personally dislikes… How is it the my taxes pay for his ABC show “Gruen” Ironically bitching about commercials… and that he can or was on a commercial radio? Double standards. Oh, I forgot….
GREED!
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