Triple M breakfast shakeup worth the pain
SCA’s chief content officer Dave Cameron told Mumbrella at the end of 2024 that “breakfast localism is critical” for Triple M, after mixing up most of its breakfast lineups to spotlight homegrown talent in each city. But even he wasn’t expecting results this quickly.
The firing of Mark Geyer after 17 years at Triple M late last year was seen as an ill-advised move at the time.
The rugby league veteran was a home-grown hero to many Sydney listeners, and when teamed with funnyman Mick Molloy in the breakfast slot, it seemed a no-brainer to keep the camaraderie the pair had been building since early 2023 flowing through to 2025. But the ratings tell the story, and a 5.1% share — seventh place in Sydney breakfast — in the all-important second-last survey of 2024 wasn’t enough to convince Cameron of the show’s worth.
So, Geyer was given his marching orders, and Molloy was moved to his hometown of Melbourne, where he immediately found an audience in the crowded Melbourne breakfast radio market.
Mick In The Morning With Roo Titus and Rosie pairs the comedian with Titus O’Reily, Nick Riewoldt, and Rosie Walton. The show drew a 7.9% share, up 1.3 points, and a cumulative audience of 363,000 listeners, its highest breakfast cume since the last survey in 2016. The quick turnaround stunned Cameron.
The show is also the top breakfast show in Melbourne for men 25-54, an important demographic for Triple M.
“Mick has absolutely knocked it out of the park when it was unexpected, and he’s leaped over several competitors,” Cameron says, gleefully mixing sporting metaphors.
“So, it’s a brilliant, brilliant launch. We kind of knew how loved Mick is in Melbourne, just from his time in other breakfast shows on Triple M in the past. But to have an immediate result like this, you often don’t get those results so early on in the piece, with a brand new show.”
“Then again,” Cameron says. “It’s Mick Molloy. There’s some great magic there, and it’s going to be pretty exciting to watch it as it grows through the footy season.”
Cameron says both he and Molloy believed he’d “be able to generate quicker results for Melbourne than in Sydney – and it’s exactly what’s happened.”
Geyer has landed on his feet, joining Clinton Maynard on Sydney’s 2GB (owned by Nine) from 5.30pm as a lead-in to the station’s Wide World of Sports evening show.
Elsewhere around the country, the local breakfast lineups are bedding in nicely.
SCA chief content officer Dave Cameron
In Sydney, Geyer and Molloy were replaced with former NRL player and host of The Amazing Race Australia Beau Ryan, news presenter Natarsha Belling, and former West Tigers captain, Aaron Woods. Belling left after just two weeks, moving to an afternoon news podcast on SCA’s Listnr platform. Despite the tumult, ratings have remained steady, at 5.8%, and listenership has grown, with a 338,000 cume showing an increase of 31,000 listeners.
In Perth, Xavier Ellis and Katie Lamb took over breakfast, and saw ratings jump by 1.0 point, to 10.3%, while Triple M Gold put Queenslanders Peter ‘Spida’ Everitt, Leisel Jones, and Liam Flanagan into the timeslot for its Gold Coast breakfast show – with those results yet to come.
Brisbane and Adelaide’s breakfast lineups remained the same, with Cameron saying he’d be “mad to touch” either of those teams.
In Adelaide, Triple M Breakfast with Roo, Ditts and Loz commands a 14% share, and has been the top FM breakfast show in the city for 19 straight surveys. “Adelaide keeps going for us” marvels Cameron.
In Brisbane, Marto, Margaux and Dan are the second-top breakfast show, with a 12.2% share, a jump of 0.5 points. Considering they are second to another SCA station — B105’s Breakfast with Stav, Abby & Matt — Cameron isn’t too concerned by the silver medal.
“Brisbane’s a real jewel in the crown for us,” he notes. “We work in a duopoly in all of our markets. So between Hit Network and Triple M Network, we strategically position both to get the lion’s share without eating each other’s turf.”
Cameron said at the end of last year that Triple M was engaging talent “we know are well-loved in each of those cities” for its breakfast lineups, and the strategy seems to be a sound one.
“Once you get that audience bolted on, you can really have them for a long time.”
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Nathan Jolly is the Features Editor at Mumbrella. He joined the team in July, 2023.
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Wait, what? Further proof that Sydney breakfast doesn’t work in Melbourne? Whodathunk?
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