Earlier this year, 2CH brought together two broadcast veterans to form Sydney’s newest breakfast show.
Indira Naidoo has an extensive background in television, having worked as a presenter on ABC and SBS. Meanwhile, her co-host Trevor Sinclair has been working in radio for 42 years – 40 of them in Sydney, he told Mediaweek.
“There is rarely ever a suburb in Sydney that Trevor hasn’t heard of or doesn’t know where it is,” Naidoo said.
The duo wrapped up their show at 9am and, at 9:05am, they were in the studio talking to Mediaweek.
Four months ago, the 2CH breakfast show adopted a cow. This was in its first week on-air.
Sinclair explained: “There was a dairy farmer in the west of Sydney – one of the few remaining in the Sydney basin – who was struggling to keep his herd alive through the drought. He’d put out a call for people to adopt a cow. So we did that.
“Then the audience got involved because we had to name the cow.”
A poll was put up on the 2CH website. It was a close call between Daisy and Moo, so the hosts combined the two names to Daisy Moo.
“No one in radio was talking about the drought four months ago,” Sinclair said.
Naidoo added: “It’s about picking those little community stories that we can see are going to have resonance and a growing impact. We didn’t know that the drought would become a problem across the state. However, through Daisy Moo, we can talk about the serious issues like the drought and have the community really come together. This is genuinely a part of the culture we have at the station.”
While 2CH uses the AM frequency, it is a music show. “There is no other radio station in Australia that is playing the diversity and the eclectic music that we are playing,” Naidoo said. “The 60s and 70s music was some of the best music ever written, recorded and sung.”
Sinclair said: “We would have the largest music universe of any radio station in Sydney. We are not repeating songs as often. When you put that with the combination of conversations that touch people, it forms a really unique offering.”
As with any other radio show, news is an important part of 2CH breakfast. Sinclair says, “It’s not heavy news but it’s topical news.”
This approach to content seems to be working with the station’s listeners. All the growth signs are pointing upwards, Sinclair said.
“Without being nasty, we started with a very low base. We have increased that audience by 53% in the four months that we have been here,” he said.
“And everyone has been quite surprised by that,” Naidoo added, laughing. “Usually, you don’t see that sort of a change so quickly when there is a new combination of people on a show like this. People were telling us, ‘You won’t see any results for six months’ or ‘You might actually lose audience because you are new, and older listeners don’t like much change.’ So we had no idea how it was going to evolve.”
Naidoo and Sinclair are continuously engaged in the process of tweaking the show. They acknowledged this would be an ongoing process.
When they went through their audition process for the job, Sinclair said, “I clicked with Indira the most in that process. Coming to work is not like coming to work right now. It’s like hanging out.”
Naidoo added: “As long-term broadcasters, we both know how rare it is to actually feel that.”
In Naidoo’s bio, 2CH calls her a “natural early riser”. When asked if this has helped her wake up to the early morning alarms, she laughed and said: “It’s one thing to naturally rise early when you can ‘dag’ around in your pyjamas at home. But to get up and actually have your mind and tongue working are a different story.
“I wasn’t sure how that would go, but I am loving this time of the day. I probably should have explored working these hours earlier in my career.” [Laughs]