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Speaker 1: Welcome to Fear and Greed Q and A where we

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Speaker 1: ask and answer questions about business, investing, economics, politics, and

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Speaker 1: all sorts of things, particularly on a Sunday morning. I'm

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Speaker 1: Sean Aelma and good morning Michael Thompson. Hello Sean, and

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Speaker 1: good morning to you. Adam Lane.

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Speaker 2: Hi Sean.

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Speaker 1: Today we're talking about what it's like to work in

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Speaker 1: a live radio station.

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Speaker 2: Oh okay.

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Speaker 1: Now Adam has run radio stations, Michael has been head

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Speaker 1: of content, but more specifically, in this instance, he was

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Speaker 1: the producer for Ray Hadley, who was two GB's long

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Speaker 1: time highest rated morning show. How long did he hold

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Speaker 1: that title for?

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Speaker 2: Twenty years? Yeah?

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Speaker 3: Long, long time.

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Speaker 1: And if you ever hear a morning radio show, I

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Speaker 1: think morning more so than evenings because they've got time

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Speaker 1: during the day. Breakfast is kind of more fun morning

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Speaker 1: to me, these morning shows are all about what's happening

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Speaker 1: in the moment. They said, the agenda they do totally

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Speaker 1: and for me, I think that'd be the hardest to produce. Now,

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Speaker 1: let's start with the basics. Michael. When you're a producer

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Speaker 1: on the Ray Hadley Morning Show, what are you doing?

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Speaker 3: So you're getting up very early? So the alarm goes

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Speaker 3: off at like half past three, right, it's a very

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Speaker 3: early start, and you're discussing from everyone's in there from

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Speaker 3: say four point thirty in the morning and discussing the

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Speaker 3: news and going through everything that's happened the newspapers, anything

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Speaker 3: from the news for TV news, radio news, overnight police reports,

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Speaker 3: press releases, what's happening in politics, what's happening in the

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Speaker 3: other parts of the world, kind.

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Speaker 1: Of it's coming through. So what times the Ray had

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Speaker 1: to It was nine much at nine am, so you're

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Speaker 1: there at four thirty. Now, Ray Hadley was famous. He

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Speaker 1: told us on the show once that he figured he

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Speaker 1: had to be up an hour earlier than his competitors, yep,

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Speaker 1: which means his people have to be up, yeah earlier.

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Speaker 1: So that is three four and a half hours before

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Speaker 1: the show starts.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, And there are legendary stories of kind of presenters

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Speaker 3: just kind of walking in kind of a couple of

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Speaker 3: minutes before the show would start. That was not the

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Speaker 3: case with Ray, that he was there for the entire time.

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Speaker 3: That we would all arrive pretty much the same time

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Speaker 3: at hapas four and just be working all this information, yeah,

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Speaker 3: figuring out kind of what the stories are for the day,

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Speaker 3: what people are potentially going to be interested in, what

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Speaker 3: is worth doing an interview on what's potentially going to

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Speaker 3: add to the story. And Ray's show is different to

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Speaker 3: a lot of other shows where they go to air

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Speaker 3: and there's a lot of things organized that it might

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Speaker 3: be kind of an interview every ten minutes or every

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Speaker 3: fifteen minutes. Ray Show is very very different that we

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Speaker 3: might go to air with one or two interviews organized

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Speaker 3: set up and might be a politician, it might be

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Speaker 3: kind of a police the police commissioner, or something about

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Speaker 3: something that's happened overnight, and the rest of it was

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Speaker 3: covering news as it came up.

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Speaker 1: So this is a three hour show, three hour show.

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Speaker 1: How many interviews in a three hour show.

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Speaker 3: You might end up with? You go to air with

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Speaker 3: one to two that were planned and other things would

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Speaker 3: evolve as you are on air, And so that is

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Speaker 3: the scramble and that you might end up with maybe five, six, seven,

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Speaker 3: eight nine, or you might end up with none across

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Speaker 3: the course of that three hours. And there's the thing

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Speaker 3: is and the difference is the open line that there

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Speaker 3: are so many calls coming in across kind of at

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Speaker 3: that time we were networked across Sydney and Brisbane and a

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Speaker 3: whole lot of regional stations throughout New South Wales and

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Speaker 3: Queensland and Victoria and elsewhere, and that there would be

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Speaker 3: calls coming through about all kinds of things, and it

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Speaker 3: might be someone that had just witnessed a robbery, or

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Speaker 3: they were calling to wish their grandmother a happy hundredth birthday,

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Speaker 3: or they were calling to report something that they had seen,

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Speaker 3: and that that would kick off an investigation and all

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Speaker 3: of a sudden, we'd be looking for somebody to talk

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Speaker 3: to and the story would take off from there. And

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Speaker 3: that was kind of what happened then. For instance, with

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Speaker 3: the home insulation that the pink bats thing under Kevin Rudd,

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Speaker 3: that that all came about through calls and emails to

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Speaker 3: the Open Line and we run with that story for

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Speaker 3: months before at last other media essentially agreed that we

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Speaker 3: were onto something and at that point it then became

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Speaker 3: a bigger story.

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Speaker 1: Okay, so I want to come back to you in

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Speaker 1: a moment and ask you what it's like in the

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Speaker 1: moment when this is happening. But take a step back, Adam,

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Speaker 1: you were running these and in fact during this period

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Speaker 1: where Michael was working with Ray you were running the

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Speaker 1: mcquarie group of radio stations. What's it like when you're overseeing.

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Speaker 1: I'm sure you're talking about, you know, worry about finance

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Speaker 1: and stuff, defamation, right, the fact that this is a

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Speaker 1: show which actually isn't overly pre planned, so anything could happen.

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Speaker 1: A caller could say anything. Michael in the moment had

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Speaker 1: to manage that. You though, kind of bigger p What

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Speaker 1: was that experience like?

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Speaker 2: Nerve racking and exciting? So it's got a look what

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Speaker 2: Andrew everyline said, actually, you know it could be the

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Speaker 2: best job. Yeah, the interview that you had with him

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Speaker 2: on Friday, I thought that was a great line about

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Speaker 2: you know, the best job and the worst job at

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Speaker 2: the same time. But it's very exciting. I mean, you know,

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Speaker 2: you're alive, that you've got all bar ten seconds of delay,

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Speaker 2: you are live to air, and most of that content

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Speaker 2: is being generated on the run. It's very very reactive,

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Speaker 2: and that's what the power of a talk radio medium

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Speaker 2: is is, Michael said, it's really about the callers and

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Speaker 2: the stories evolving live so compelling to create and listen to.

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Speaker 2: But you know, then underneath that is every day you've

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Speaker 2: got to review how to the show go, What are

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Speaker 2: we going to do tomorrow? What can we do better

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Speaker 2: tomorrow than we did today? And so those systems and

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Speaker 2: processes in training, and you've got such expert people like

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Speaker 2: Michael and like Ray and like the people around him

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Speaker 2: to make sure it all works. Then you've got the

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Speaker 2: technology team. It's live to air. We can't have a

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Speaker 2: failure there, you know, for clients. We can't have a

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Speaker 2: defamation or a brand risk there because that could ruin

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Speaker 2: advertisers experience. So it's all such this mutual dependency between operations,

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Speaker 2: sales and the content teams. It is full on so

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Speaker 2: best of jobs and scary at the same time.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, okay, Michael, tell me a time when you're in

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Speaker 1: the moment and you went, oh, what am I going

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Speaker 1: to do? Too many to be.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, no, no, no. There were a lot of them

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Speaker 3: where news was breaking, and I suppose the probably the

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Speaker 3: most significant would have been the Link Cafe siege in Sydney.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, in some place where runman came in and shot.

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Speaker 3: Up yeah cafe, yeah and so and that, because that

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Speaker 3: started at around kind of nine thirty ten am, so

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Speaker 3: we'd be on air for half an hour at that point,

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Speaker 3: and the call started to come through from people who

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Speaker 3: were witnessing something happening there. And that was one of

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Speaker 3: those days that I I will never forget that because

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Speaker 3: Ray's show was supposed to be on for three hours

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Speaker 3: and we ended up staying on for I think nine

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Speaker 3: or ten hours straight, and because the open line then

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Speaker 3: became a lot of the hostages were calling through to

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Speaker 3: the open line, and it was just the most extraordinary

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Speaker 3: and tragic set of circumstances. But it also just showed

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Speaker 3: at it when it began. It was the power of

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Speaker 3: this medium that people were calling to say, Hey, this

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Speaker 3: is going on. Do you have any idea what's going on?

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Speaker 3: And very quickly we had this sense that it was

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Speaker 3: a much much bigger event than what was initially thought.

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Speaker 3: That it was initially thought it was an under robbery,

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Speaker 3: and that very soon became apparent that it was not.

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Speaker 1: Wow, what an incredible experience, Adam, you managed all these people,

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Speaker 1: so you had to manage Michael. No idea how you

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Speaker 1: did that. You got through it, but managing Ray Hadley

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Speaker 1: and Alan Jones was another one of the stars. Neil

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Speaker 1: Mitchell was another one of the stars, and Ross Stevenson,

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Speaker 1: How do you manage these people? Because they are smart,

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Speaker 1: they are capable, They have the audience on their side generally,

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Speaker 1: even though I mean Neil Mitchell, probably Allen Jones even

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Speaker 1: more so. You know you're either for or again, but

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Speaker 1: they have these incredible audiences. It must be very difficult

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Speaker 1: to manage these different types of people.

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Speaker 2: Yes, it is. It is challenging. But something that's really

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Speaker 2: easy to see to your point is they're extremely talented

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Speaker 2: and they do something that I just cannot do, wouldn't

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Speaker 2: want to and cannot. And so my job became about, well,

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Speaker 2: how do I support them? You representing the business interests

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Speaker 2: and making it in their interest too. And so I

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Speaker 2: think that even Kyle Sandalan's back at the Stereo days,

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Speaker 2: you can find an overlap between your interests in theirs,

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Speaker 2: and you just hope to use that really skillfully to

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Speaker 2: keep them on side.

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Speaker 1: Michael, do you miss it?

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Speaker 3: I miss the pace of it and the excitement of

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Speaker 3: not knowing what is going to happen and when the

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Speaker 3: fact that any call coming in on the open line

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Speaker 3: could spark something. And there are those components, those elements

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Speaker 3: of it I miss.

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Speaker 1: But others you don't others.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, it's it is a stressful It is a stressful job.

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Speaker 3: But I actually quite enjoyed that part as well. That

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Speaker 3: the pressure of making sure that it all worked, and

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Speaker 3: I used to this sounds really sad. I love taking notes,

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Speaker 3: and so that's how we kind of get around a

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Speaker 3: lot of the defamation issues because we had extraordinary numbers,

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Speaker 3: copious quantities of notes to ensure that if it ever

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Speaker 3: went to court, were we were prepped and covered. And

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Speaker 3: it's just that is kind of its own very dull thrill.

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Speaker 1: People have. If aren't journalists, probably don't understand the absolute

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Speaker 1: thrill of being a journalist and when something has happened. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: I mean kind of in newspaper land. I remember the

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Speaker 1: day of nine to eleven. I remember that day so

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Speaker 1: clearly in my mind. And one of the biggest debates

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Speaker 1: was with you run a front page photo of the

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Speaker 1: people for jumping off the building. So we're so disturbing

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Speaker 1: to your point there, like you never quite get the

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Speaker 1: thrill of that, No, the adrenaline rush in anything else.

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Speaker 3: No, No, No, the fact that you asked in some

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Speaker 3: cases kind of seeing history unfold and you have a

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Speaker 3: it's quite a privileged position to be and to be

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Speaker 3: reporting it and being the conduit for people to actually

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Speaker 3: understand and hear what's happening.

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Speaker 1: Fantastic. Thank you very much, Michael, thank you, Sean.

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Speaker 2: Thank you Adam, thank you Sean.

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Speaker 1: If you've got a question you'd like us to tackle,

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Speaker 1: send it through on LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook, or at fearanngreed

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Speaker 1: dot com dot au. You want to talk to any

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Speaker 1: of us about leadership or running a business, that would

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Speaker 1: be Adam Production. In fact, anything pub trivia quizzes is

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Speaker 1: Michael Production knowledge, all that stuff me I can have

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Speaker 1: it to talk about myself. I'm sure I am. And

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Speaker 1: this is peering Greek Q and a