Red Symons will join Neill Mitchell as a regular guest this year after being dumped by ABC Melbourne at the end of last year for a younger breakfast duo, Jacinta Parsons and Sami Shah.
Symons told Mitchell last month that ABC management offered him other roles after the decision to move him on from the breakfast slot, but instead he chose to resign:
“It’s very clear in the commercial [radio] environment what the objectives are and what the measure is,” he said. “At the ABC… it’s intellectual of some sort…
“They did a rubber stamp around all the breakfast programs in metros Australia where they had a boy and a girl, a man and a woman together as a duo because for whatever reason they thought that’s how you did it.”
The interview turns out to have been an audition for a regular spot, which was confirmed to the Herald Sun yesterday by Mitchell: “I really enjoyed our chat last month and I think it will be fresh and fun… Red is unpredictable. It could go anywhere and I like that.”