Although this thread was started in 2005, I thought I would comment in light of the recent developments with changes to Triple M's sports schedule from next year.
For 11 years during 2002-12, 2GB's Continuous Call Team (CCT) held RL fans in NSW to ransom, subjecting them to the 'exclusivity' crap. The CCT were good back in the '90s on 2UE, especially when the late-Peter Frilingos was around. The CCT 2-3hr pre-game show wasn't adulterated with stupid discussions about women's clothes, marriage counselling, monologues starting with "Ray, I'm outraged! Last night when I went to.....".
Even when MNF was introduced in 2007, 2GB paid to stop the likes of 2SM or 2UE from broadcasting the Monday Night game (even though 2GB had absolutely no interest nor intention to broadcast it in the first case). I still remember that Graeme Hughes-Gallop interview on 2SM in 2006 after the radio rights were announced, and Gallop sounded so amateur in his explanation as to why 2GB got the exclusive rights. Gallop knew he screwed up afterwards, so he tried to arrange another interview with Hughes and made himself look even more amateur and pathetic as a CEO in the 2nd interview.
As a consequence of this disasterous arrangement, there were many games in the round that had radio blackouts with no coverage whatsoever if you didn't have Foxtel. David Gallop really gave 2GB a saloon passage during that decade of exclusivity, even handing them the 2008 RLWC commercial rights on a silver platter without any bidding, only for Hadley during the pre-game show of the Australia vs New Zealand opener to bag out international RL and the tournament being a waste of time.
The exclusivity clause of the radio rights extended as far as 2GB forcing a NSW Blues luncheon Graeme Hughes organised around 2011 or so being cancelled! (again, even though 2GB had no intention of ever hosting it at all)
When Triple M's NRL coverage expanded from MNF to 4 games/round in 2013, it was a huge breath of fresh air. In that first year, I spent many hours listening to their NRL shows. I loved the original Sunday Offload show with Dan Ginnane/Matt Johns/Gorden Tallis. The first 2 hours of the show (12-2pm, with 2-3pm being the pre-game show to their 3pm match) was like the radio version of The Sunday Roast during the Vossy era - the Sunday Offload found the right balance of humour/stories/anecdotes mixed in with serious talk on RL issues.
Now, with Triple M Sydney being forced to broadcast all Swans/GWS matches from next year, as well as a Saturday night game which could end up being between two Victorian teams that most sports fans in Sydney don't give a stuff about, this is obviously going to mean a cut-back in their NRL coverage (as AFL has precedence over their NRL commitments). I'm concerned about what the next radio rights could hold for RL fans. Eventually this may transpire into 2GB getting the exclusive commercial radio rights once again. I would love to see NRL in Sydney have the coverage AFL has in Melbourne (where all 9 AFL matches are covered by Melbourne radio stations), but can only dream of this occurring anytime soon. RL fans deserve far better than what has been dished up to them so far in the 21st century.
