THE TALK SHOW 1 - Neil Mitchell vs Jon Faine (774 vs 3AW)

They’re supposed to make your mornings, or, in many cases, ruin some state or federal politicians’ day as they probe, and persist, to get answers or help you make sense of polly waffle.

They – 3AW’s Neil Mitchell and ABC’s Jon Faine – are the kings of Melbourne talkback radio, and have dominated Melbourne’s airwaves for nearly 20years. But with the changes in how we get our news, is there room for either of these media greats on our airwaves anymore?

Neil Mitchell has dominated ratings since Jon Faine took up the airwaves in 1997 winning 127 times to Faines 12. But for the first time ever since competing against each other, Faine takes a 2-0 lead against Mitchell this year having some people predict that maybe this is a sign of things to come. The team down at ABC have admittedly tried to take on a younger, more commercial feel and in my opinion, they are heading down the right track.

It’s clear from the ratings that both shows are strong with the elderly audiences and I think I may know why. Talk back radio is where a lot of elderly turn to for their news reports. If you talk to someone over the age of 60 about ‘Twitter’, you’d be hard-pressed to find anyone that knew what you were talking about, however Twitter is now the fastest way in media to find out what is going on in the world. This is the way of the future and not to run the risk of sounding too offensive, the elderly won’t be around for much longer and unless Mitchell and Faine can appeal to a younger generation, I fear that the era of talk back radio might be dying as well.  

There was a perfect example of how out of touch their audiences were with one of the talk back threads on Neil Mitchells show being about how Australia Post was going to cut the amount of days they deliver mail down to only 2 days a week. This topic brought in quite a lot of discussion from, you guessed it, the elderly who were quite upset at the prospect of not hearing from their pen friends every single day.  One caller even saying that she “doesn’t have that silly email thing or whatever it’s called”.  Give it 15 years and most households won’t have a landline for their phones either.

Neil Mitchell has one of two choices, he either takes a leaf out of Jon Faines and the ABC’s book and changes the feel of their 3AW show to appeal to the younger generation or, and this is my advice as well, step aside at the end of the year when his contract ends and pass the reigns over to a man who is capable of conforming.