Sydney’s 104.1 2DayFM today confirmed that the Hughesy, Ed & Erin Breakfast show has ended.
Hughsey, Ed and Erin said: “We’ve loved our time together on 2DayFM Breakfast, however, due to some of our families living in different cities we are unable to commit to 2025, so with a heavy heart we are moving aside so 2DayFM can find the team to take them forward in Breakfast. We are so grateful to Sydney for their support, and to double the number of listeners in three years is something we are immensely proud of, and we will miss each and every one of them.”
SCA thanks Dave Hughes, Erin Molan and Ed Kavalee for their passion and commitment to the 2DayFM Sydney Breakfast show over the past three and a half years.
- Southern Cross Austereo, 8th Aug 2024
This is where people would expect me to say "I hate to say I told you so" but the truth is that I love it.
https://rollo75.blogspot.com/2023/05/horse-3177-this-zoo-is-not-wild.html
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.
...
It really is like trying to capture lightning in a bottle and even then it has a maximum shelf life of about 5 years.
- Horse 3177, 10th May 2023
Although Southern Cross Austereo has tried to spin this to make it sound like the reason for this show's axing was to do host Dave Hughes' unwillingness to move interstate permanently, and didn't want to continue commuting from Melbourne to Sydney, there is a far more obvious reason why this show is being axed. It's bad.
The audience has finally confirmed what I already knew, with the ratings on a month by month basis continuing to circle the drain. For the month of July, the Hughesy, Ed & Erin Breakfast show achieved a paltry 3.6% rating of the market but trying to throw Hughesy under the bus for his reasonable decision not to move to Sydney, just looks churlish. In comparison. 2Day FM's rivals at KIIS with Kyle and Jackie O and at WS-FM with Jonesy and Amanda scored 14.1% and 8.1% respectively.
What's really scummy about this was that Southern Cross Austereo’s Chief Content Officer, Dave Cameron (as opposed to former British PM David Cameron) told Hughesy, Ed and Erin after Wednesday morning’s show, in a lightning strike of a meeting, that the show would be cancelled. Quite rightly the trio after having been effectively fired, walked out; which meant that other hosts had to be called in for Thursday and Friday.
What went wrong? I think that I correctly identified this 15 months ago. Namely, that the show simply didn't work.
Ed Kavalee is simply too nice a person to bat things back at Dave Hughes. Dave Hughes who can be really quite acerbic at times, found that he had no obvious object to play with as a comedy punching bag. Erin Molan who usually has a hosting role on Sky News Australia where she plays the role of inane company spokesperson, neither has the comedy chops to be able to play the role in the morning zoo, nor was forceful enough to deliberately get rises out of Hughesy or Ed. The whole show often felt directionless at times; which is not want you want from an FM radio breakfast show.
An FM radio breakfast show ideally needs an established set of radio DJs or some kind of comedy duo or trio (or zoo). Comedy Duos generally have Dagger and Shield players like Southern Cross Austereo’s rivals at KIIS and WS-FM have. Comedy Trios have the Big, the Bounce, and the Boo-Hoo, like Clarkson, Hammond, and May. Functionally Hughesy wants to play Boohoo and while Ed can play Big, Erin can't do Bounce. Erin as Big, simply doesn't hand out enough comedy rope for the other two to hang themselves with.
Basically Southern Cross Austereo’s problem is that they haven't hit the radio behemoth dominance ratings of Peter Moon and Wendy Harmer, or Kyle and Jackie O. 2Day FM would really like to be the commercial equivalent of BBC Radio 1 but to do that, it would actually have to go out and find fresh young talent but its commercial outlook means that it doesn't want to risk commercial failure (except here it has done exactly that).
If I was 2DayFM then I'd look through the ranks of the Melbourne International Comedy Festival and then select from the talent pool. People like Jimmy Rees, Danielle Walker, Nina Oyama etc. Find those people in Sydney and pick from them but make sure that they can play off of each other but don't attempt to build a morning zoo from components that simply do not work.
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