‘Bad luck to ARN’: Ben Fordham on Sydney radio shake-up
The 2GB breakfast host says ARN’s reset has helped smoothfm, and reveals how close he came to walking away.
2GB breakfast host Ben Fordham has delivered a pointed assessment of ARN’s Sydney radio reset, arguing its changes to two established breakfast shows have helped send listeners towards smoothfm.
“And a lot of them have found Smooth, which is good luck to Smooth. Bad luck to ARN,” Fordham told Mediaweek, days after signing another five-year deal with 2GB owner Tapt Media.
‘Bad luck to ARN’
Fordham said he did not see the rebuilding KIIS breakfast show as creating a fundamentally different contest for 2GB.
“I don't think there's any necessarily new battleground,” he said.
Instead, he pointed to the wider disruption caused by the end of The Kyle & Jackie O Show and ARN’s decision to move longtime GOLD breakfast hosts Brendan ‘Jonesy’ Jones and Amanda Keller into national Drive.
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Fordham characterised those changes bluntly, saying: “ARN got rid of Kyle and Jackie O and Jonesy and Amanda.”
Jones and Keller remain with ARN, but their move out of breakfast ended a 20-year run in the timeslot. Broadcasters Kyle Sandilands and Jackie O Henderson, meanwhile, left KIIS breakfast following the collapse of their long-running partnership earlier this year.
Fordham argued the upheaval had sent listeners searching elsewhere on the FM dial, with smoothfm emerging as the winner.
“The only real beneficiary has been Smooth,” he said.
The latest GfK Radio 360 Survey 5 gives some weight to the broader picture, although it cannot establish where individual listeners migrated. smoothfm was Sydney’s number one station with a 13.5 per cent share, while 2GB was second on 11.2 per cent. KIIS 1065 recorded 6.6 per cent.
Breakfast tells a slightly different story. Fordham remained comfortably number one with 14.8 per cent, ahead of smoothfm on 12.2 per cent. KIIS breakfast recorded 6.9 per cent.
Fordham said music and talk naturally trade listeners depending on the news cycle and people’s moods.
“People either want to wake up in the morning and they want to know what's happening or they just want to listen to some Billy Joel. And I'm cool with that as well.”
The deal was ‘too good to refuse’
Fordham’s confidence comes after committing another five years to 2GB, but he said walking away was a genuine option if the terms had not stacked up.
“I encouraged them to make me a deal. It was too good to refuse and they did,” he said.
“So if the deal wasn't good, I would have taken it as an opportunity to hit the eject button and give something else a go.”
The agreement is one of the biggest talent commitments made since the Laundy Family Office completed its $56 million acquisition of Nine’s radio assets in April and relaunched the business as Tapt Media.
Fordham said his friendship with Laundy Group owner Arthur Laundy was an important part of staying. He has known Arthur and his son, Laundy Hotels director Craig Laundy, for around 15 years.
The negotiation began in characteristically informal fashion.
“I'm not ready to sign anything, but I'm ready to shake hands,” Fordham recalled telling Arthur Laundy. The pair shook on it and, Fordham said, “ended up having a hug and that was that”.
The new ownership has also brought Fordham more flexibility around breakfast’s punishing hours. He now has 2GB presenter James Willis as a regular fill-in and has negotiated the ability to occasionally miss a morning or leave early for important family events.
That matters after six years of 3.15am alarms at 2GB, on top of four years of similarly early starts during his time with Today.
“The breakfast hours are a killer,” Fordham said. “And it knocks you around.”
Fordham can still see a ‘third act’
Five more years of breakfast does not mean Fordham has abandoned thoughts of doing something completely different.
“I just feel like there's a third act waiting for me and I'm just not entirely sure what it is,” he said.
Fordham said watching his wife, former Seven Network journalist Jodie Speers, retrain in law had made the prospect of changing careers more compelling.
He has at least ruled out one avenue.
“It won't be politics, that's for sure.”
Other ideas are considerably less settled. “I'd love to edit a newspaper,” Fordham said. He also floated the prospect of running a hospitality venue, although admitted there is one problem: he hates cooking.
The Laundys have left the door open to pursuing interests outside radio during the life of his new contract, giving Fordham a potential way to test that third act without immediately leaving 2GB.
Kyle Sandilands feud: ‘toughen the F up’
Fordham also addressed his periodically combustible relationship with Sandilands, revealing the last direct exchange between the pair did not exactly end with a peace treaty.
“I told him to toughen the F up, I think, from memory was my last text to him and I haven't heard from him after that,” Fordham said.
But he played down the idea of a genuine personal feud, saying the two broadcasters would probably hug if they ran into each other.
“We're two big pansies who just kind of, you know, talk tough, but in the moment we saw each other, we'd be giving each other a hug.”
Fordham also expressed concern about Sandilands’ health, saying his brain aneurysm sounded “rather serious” and that he had no interest in fuelling their feud while the broadcaster was dealing with it.
“If there are independent people out there who've got the balls to put their money where their mouth is and make a go of something like his project, that's gotta be a good thing for everyone in the industry.”
“Kyle's all right,” he said. “His bark is a thousand times worse than his bite.”
Jackie O, Fiji and the spiritual adviser story
His relationship with Henderson is considerably warmer.
Fordham revealed the two families accidentally found themselves holidaying at the same Fiji resort last year after first discovering they were booked on the same seaplane to the island.
Fordham proposed one rule: no radio talk.
“We never spoke about radio once in seven days,” he said.
He also played down previous comments portraying Henderson as his astrological or spiritual adviser, conceding he may have exaggerated the arrangement. Asked whether she had actually read his tarot cards, Fordham replied: “No, I might've overstated.”
The dirty couch that helped build Fordham’s team
Fordham said another reason he was comfortable committing for five years was the depth of the team around him, much of which has emerged through 2GB’s work experience and internship pathways.
That pipeline, he said, can be traced back to an unglamorous decision from his early days hosting Drive.
Fordham inherited a “dirty old couch” in his office and asked for it to be removed. In its place went a desk, computer and phone reserved for work experience students.
Only after getting rid of it did he learn the couch apparently dated back to the days when former Labor powerbroker Graham Richardson was a radio host at 2GB in the 1980s.
“It was a stinker of a couch,” Fordham recalled. “They said, oh, that was actually owned by Graham Richardson in the 1980s. I said, oh yeah, I'm not surprised.”
The replacement desk ultimately helped feed young talent into Fordham’s program and other parts of the station.
“Probably the smartest call I made was getting rid of that old couch,” he said.
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