Talking the talk

As more competitors pile into the talk radio space, PAUL LITTLE looks at what's now on offer in the lucrative breakfast slot.

- SIMON YOUNG

For a long time now, talk radio for people starting their day has been a virtual duopoly. Although there are other choices, most of us tune into either the wizards of woke on RNZ National's Morning Report or the raging right-wingers at Newstalk ZB.

Morning Report first went to air in 1975, and Newstalk ZB has been with us since 1987. But suddenly, our choices have doubled. Today FM - a fully fledged talk station whose ancestry can be traced back to the advent of talk radio in New Zealand - went to air on March 21. And on May 9, The Platform was launched. It's an internet-based service, which RNZ National's Media Watch described, with just a whiff of condescension, as "radio-like".

The Platform's founder and breakfast host, former Morning Report co-host Sean Plunket, carries a sulphurous whiff of devil's advocacy at best, and no one quite knew where Today FM's prize catch, former Newshub political editor Tova O'Brien, stood. Both arrived promising to be fair, although they would say that, wouldn't they?

Morning Report, which is currently co-hosted by Corin Dann and Susie Ferguson, makes the same claim. Presumably, Mike Hosking Breakfast does too, although we can't be certain as its eponymous host was oddly shy when it came to talking to the Listener (see sidebar on page 24).

One thing we can be certain about is that Mike Hosking Breakfast is enjoying unprecedented ratings success. May figures show Hosking has more than half a million listeners each week significantly more than Morning Report, which has had a bumpy ride since Guyon Espiner left in 2019. From a high of 531,800 listeners in late 2020, it fell to 407,900 a year later, but has begun creeping up slowly, with 426,700 listeners in December and up again slightly to 429,100 in the most recent result.

TALK VS TALKBACK