Merrick and Rosso on DMG Breakfast

Former Triple J drive personalities Merrick and Rosso have been confirmed as the breakfast presenters for DMG’s new Sydney station. DMG Group PD Dean Buchanan told AMT that their producer Jen Oldershaw would also join the team along with “one of the world’s best imaging producers from overseas.”

“They will bring their shoddy brand of humour to Sydney’s breakfast airwaves,” said Buchanan. Merrick Watts and Tim Rosso are  “daunted but enthusiastic about the new timeslot, except that is it too bloody early.”

Merrick and Rosso rated between 7% and 9% on Triple J and Buchanan is expecting them to be just as successful for DMG. He is not making any wild predictions about audience share though: “At the moment we are rating 0%, so we can’t go down… we are in this for the long term, not just the first few ratings surveys, we are looking 3, 5, 7 years into the future.”

AMT: I think it is safe to assume with the lineup you are putting in place that you will not be oldies or classic rock, right? Buchanan: “You’ll have to wait and see.”  AMT: Are you looking forward to a battle for Austereo’s listeners? Buchanan: “It would be stupid to start a radio war, we will not be doing that.”

AMT: You have got people like Corey Layton and Bianca Dye who are known in Melbourne and in regional radio. Does that mean that you will be networking their programs? Buchanan: “Absolutely bloody not! There will be no networking in Sydney or Melbourne. We are designing a Sydney station for Sydney listeners and a Melbourne station for Melbourne listeners.”

AMT: When will you be going to air? Buchanan: “Even if I wanted to I couldn’t tell you because we do not know… It all depends on equipment and facilities… We will be on air by the required date of June 30, that’s all I know for sure.”  AMT: Some industry people are saying you will launch Melbourne and Sydney simultaneously. Any truth in that? Buchanan: “None whatsoever, it is furthest from our minds. When we won Melbourne we patted ourselves on the back and had a few glasses of champagne, but we haven’t given it much thought since then. We have regional surveys in NSW, Victoria and SA, plus 5AA has had some lineup changes. We are concentrating on those and the Sydney station first, then we’ll think more about Melbourne.”

This is an archival story from when the radioinfo website was previously known as AMT.

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