Some mornings on the way to work when I pass through Blacktown Station, I see this billboard:
This billboard at Blacktown Station, is trying to get people to listen to Hughesy, Ed and Erin on 2Day-FM or via the LiSTNR app in the mornings. I imagine that this particular billboard isn't as well placed as it aught to be, considering that the prime target for people to listen to the radio in the mornings is in their cars and almost by definition, if you are standing at the station you are not in a car. Maybe this billboard hopes to get people to listen via the FM app on their phones or via the LiSTNR app but given the immense amount of podcasts that are available in the world, I again wonder how effective this billboard is.
Well, I have to say that it worked on me. I was curious enough to listen to Hughesy, Ed and Erin on 2Day-FM for a week and I have to say that this show is... meh. Together, the Hughesy, Ed and Erin on 2Day-FM is a show which is less than the sum of its parts. This is a pity for 2Day-FM as I think that Southern Cross Austereo looked around at the biggest names that were available and they could slot into a morning zoo type program and hoped that it would work. It does not. Herein lies the ultimate problem with morning radio and creating a lineup. It really is like trying to capture lightning in a bottle and even then it has a maximum shelf life of about 5 years. Radio because of its almost intimate nature with the listener, either requires a very strong personality to hold the show above their head by themselves, or a very well sorted duo or triplet. Very occasionally a morning zoo program will operate with five or more but that's a rarity.
Of people who could hold up a radio show by themselves, if you eliminate talkback radio (which eliminates people like John Laws, Stan Zemanek, John Pierce, Jack Davey etc), then the one name which stands atop the radio pile in Australia is arguably Doug Mulray. There have been a few duos over the years who can run a morning zoo type show; these include Adam and Wil, Merrick and Rosso. When it comes to the really really big morning zoo format, there have really only been two in Australia which have ever been truly successful. One of them was Triple-M's "The Cage" which was made up of Peter Berner, Brigitte Duclos, James Brayshaw, Matt Parkinson & Mike Fitzpatrick.
Pete, Brig, JB, Parko and Fitzy were in different cities and the program was switched through the offices of Triple-M in Melbourne. The reason why this ultimately worked was not because you had a bunch of personalities bouncing off each other, but that it acted as a semi-permanent writer's room which would just generate segments and run with them for a while. It also had the added rule that Brigitte Duclos as the only woman on the show, had the power to eject anyone for any reason via the "red card".
The name "morning zoo" as a format, ultimately comes from Melbourne as well. While WRBQ in Tampa had one in 1987, New York City's Z-100 in 1985, and Cleveland's WMMS had the Buzzard Morning Zoo, it was Melbourne's 3XY which had the "XY-Zoo" with Richard Stubbs, Peter O'Callaghan & Jane Holmes; starting in 1980. If the ABC's JJJ was labelled as "ratbag radio", then 3XY was decried as behaving like a bunch of zoo animals by the Melbourne Herald; hence the name of the program.
The reason why the XY-Zoo worked as far as I can tell, is that Stubbs, O'Callaghan & Holmes were already familiar with each other from working the Melbourne comedy circuit. In other words, the XY-Zoo which was likely the original, probably has its origin story in university. That has not happened with Hughesy, Ed and Erin on 2Day-FM. Erin Molan runs a perfectly sensible program on Sky News Australia. Ed Kavalee has been on telly on. Dave Hughes is more likely to be doing stand-up shows. Together, this is not an organic trio.
There are a number of comedy trio tropes but the most common is the Big Leader who is usually incompetent and rubbish; the either depressive or sycophantic Number Two who is either forced to or openly enthusiastically goes along with the schemes of the Big Leader; and the Only Sane One, who act as the last remaining guard against the madness of the first two. If Number Two and the Only Sane One are roughly of equal strength of personality, they they may interchange between roles, and even become the lead for a few short adventures but in the long run they revert to type. Mickey, Donald, and Goofy; Larry, Curly, and Moe; Groucho, Harpo, and Chico; Clarkson, Hammond, and May: are all examples of this archetype of this comedy trio.
Hughesy is the obvious Big Leader and has a personality which is big enough to hold an entire room by himself. I do not think that he is necessarily suited to being in a comedy trio as that role though. On programs like Channel 10's "The Project", he assumes another role and does that well. In this case, Hughesy tries to be funny but with only Ed and Erin to bounce off, it doesn't quite work either.
Ed Kavalee is an insanely good Only Sane One. Ed is a very good when he is working towards some kind of goal or point, like he would do in the TV show "Santo, Sam, and Ed's Football" et cetera, but as neither Hughesy or Erin can provide that obvious direction, he is left directionless. Neither can Ed occupy the Big Leader role, as demonstrated by the short lived Australian version of "TV Burp".
Erin Molan is a perfectly competent radio host but she simply isn't funny. I kind of feel that she might do better as a foil in a duo, or as the lead host in a serious radio show, but not here. I could for instance see Erin Molan as the lead on something like ABC Radio National's "PM" or perhaps the host of an evening slot. Erin has been placed in a box which she can not thrive in.
2Day-FM's problem is that like a lot of legacy media, they look back over their once astounding ratings numbers and can not rebuild the past. They will never again have a show like The Morning Crew with With Wendy Harmer, Peter Moon, Paul Holmes & The Guru in the mornings, and Kyle and Jackie O have been poached by KIIS-FM. The morning slot on 2Day-FM is a place that is insanely difficult for anyone to live up to. The other prolem is that as a commercial entity, they need established stars and can not really afford to experiment. The magic piano which only plays the song "ka-ching" needs to keep on playing that song or else the lights go out. If I was given the gig of filling the slot, I'd be scouring Sydney Uni, UNSW, and Western Sydney Uni's revue shows for comedy troupes, placing them on the radio in the evenings and then letting them loose in the morning. 2Day-FM haven't played that long game though.
Having said that, go listen to the show. You might like it. I do not. Your mileage might vary. I just do not think that this show works well. It might also be because I am old and I know how tropes should work.
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