I would be surprised if most of the newsreaders are anything but school leavers. My guess is 2SM couldn't afford a heck of a lot in terms of newsreader talent. Think about it this way, the station refuses to be subjected to ratings... if you are an advertiser, how skeptical are you going to be to see value in a station that can't be independently verify as to how many listeners they actually have? Listen to the quality of the ads they do have, John Laws is hawking orthotics footwork FFS! Last year he was doing some shoe mob in Padstow that would be the size of a postage stamp. So you get little in the way of incoming revenues from advertising, your outgoings would be low for most of their talkback hosts EXCEPT for John Laws who'd be on a massive wicket still. Lawsey would be taking up a huge percentage of their take, but without Lawsy, I don't think outside of Talking Sport they'd get anyone listening.
Remember, Graeme Gilbert, the bloke they promote as the king of night time talk back once attracted a rating of 0.1%, the lowest ever recorded rating. Did he get performance managed out? Nope, bloke is still there a decade later. All Radio 2SM did was leave the ratings program after that. And I loooove the ad that they've played countless times in Talkin Sport for the other Graeme who does the graveyard shift, its a playback of hopefully you'd think their most exciting caller, you know, something to drag you in...
"Well, somewhere along the line you've clicked on something or gone to a website that has given Telstra permission to send your details to third parties."
"No I haven't."
"Well you must have..."
"I've owned my iPhone for years and I haven't."
"Oh, ok."
Still, I got a chuckle yesterday, they did a playback ad for John Laws in Talkin Sport, it was a caller named Susan who was saying Lawsy doesn't want to hear from the common folk anymore, and he goes straight back "I'm talking to you aren't I?" Next caller on Talkin Sport.... HOOIII GOUUUYSSSS, its Sue. And I swear to God, its the same voice as Susan. The hosts were obviously super interested in the ad they just played because they never thought to ask if she was Susan from the John Laws show as well.
