The Taming Of A Radio Rebel
Sydney Morning Herald
Monday March 16, 1998
Bob Rogers marks four decades in Sydney radio this week.
HEATHER CHAPMAN tunes in to the compulsive talker and stops the dial on some things you've never heard on-air.
WHEN Bob Rogers began his Sydney radio career 40 years ago this week, it was unthinkable that a mere disc jockey could get under the skin of some of Australia's most powerful men. After all, talkback radio was still to come - in April 1967 - and disc jockeys were playing pop records interspersed with bland chit-chat.
After Rogers joined 2UE in March 1958, he changed all that. He raised the bar not just for disc jockeys but for radio announcers generally, and in doing so, paved the way for other controversial broadcasters such as Alan Jones and John Laws. Along the way, 2UE's "ace star disc jockey" also managed to make two media barons so angry that he was blacklisted by one and sued for $1 million by the other.
Now 71 and still broadcasting, the outspoken Rogers these days finds that the sedate format of easy listening music station 2CH requires that, if he can't resist making acerbic comments, they should have a sugar coating.
Even so, since he took over the morning program in 1995 for his old mate, John Singleton, owner of the Macquarie Network, he has more than doubled the audience and helped to keep the station up near the middle of the Sydney ratings. "I'm certainly fortunate - I was the right person at the right time," he says.
Mark Spurway, Macquarie's program director, includes Rogers in his list of Australia's top five broadcasters of the past 40 years; the others, in no particular order, are Laws, Jones, Gary O'Callaghan and Ron E. Sparks.
The extraordinary, colourful and successful career of Rogers as a high-flying Sydney radio disc jockey began when he arrived with his family in his FJ Holden from Brisbane, where he was an established star.
He came to help 2UE launch its Top 40 format - one of two major developments in postwar radio. The other was talkback radio. Rogers conquered the first, not the second.
After two years with 2UE, he moved to 2SM, where he stayed for the same duration. He also hosted a variety show at the time for Channel 9 and toured the world for 2SM with the Beatles.
When he returned to 2UE to present the morning program, he was top-rated for 11 years.
It was here he broke new ground for Australian radio, presenting new records, newsy interviews, bitchy gossip and comments, as well as news about people which made the program required listening, particularly for the rest of the media.
He had so much clout at 2UE that when young disc jockey Laws left to go to 2SM, Rogers was able to include a clause in his own contract that stipulated he could cancel it if the station brought Laws back. The rivalry continued for years and when Laws announced, in the late 1960s, that he would insure his voice for $200,000, Rogers responded: "If he's insuring his voice, I'll insure my brain."
Rogers was undaunted by the power of some of the people he targeted, which was one reason he became undisputed king of Australian radio in the '60s and early '70s.
In 1967, when Rupert Murdoch married his second wife, Anna Torv, Rogers not only announced on 2UE that the wedding was to take place, he also described the bride's outfit and made barbed comments about the bridegroom.
It is a measure of the man's standing at the time that this resulted in him being banned from all Murdoch publications for years - something even 2UE's current titans, Laws and Jones, haven't achieved.
Rogers says now that he made the broadcast after a remark by a former 2UE colleague, Ormsby Wilkins, who handed him some notes, saying, "I bet you're not game to announce that."
"That was just what I loved, of course," Rogers says, "so I said on the air, 'There's an event of great interest happening today which should be the major story in all the afternoon tabloids. The banners could read something like 'Divorced Millionaire Newspaper Tycoon Marries Teenage Cadet Journalist', but Mr Rupert Murdoch obviously has a gentlemen's agreement with the management of other papers, so you won't read about it, so I'll tell you: Mr Murdoch is divorced and he is to marry a 19-year-old girl called Anna Torv.' "
To compound his "offence", Rogers described the bride's outfit. He says that Garry Wilkinson, now at Channel 7 but then in the 2UE newsroom, saw Anna Torv arrive at the motel opposite 2UE to change for the wedding. He made a mental note of the clothes she was carrying and told Rogers.
"Rupert was reported to have said he was not a public figure - and, in those days, he was not - so he banned me for several years," says Rogers. Murdoch publications even referred to his Channel 7 show of the time, not by its name, The Bob Rogers Show, but as "late night variety", he says.
As a columnist for News Ltd then, I was restricted to using unflattering descriptions such as "Sydney's oldest disc jockey", if I had to report about Rogers, then radio's best known personality.
Rogers says he was eventually told by an intermediary that if he apologised, the ban might be lifted. He couldn't apologise, he says, but he sent a letter offering "an olive branch", which was accepted in a letter dated February 17, 1972, and signed "K. R. Murdoch". He still has the letter.
Comments about another media baron, Sir Frank Packer, resulted in Sir Frank suing 2UE and Rogers himself for $1 million each. Sir Frank settled for an apology.
Newspapers, particularly the three daily tabloids, monitored the Rogers program regularly and reported on his activities. Despite the Murdoch ban, his collection of headlines, many of them on front pages, must be some sort of record: Ban on Bob Rogers, Bob Rogers sacked, Bob Rogers replies to press attack, Rogers bites the dust, Bob Rogers - reckless tongue, Bob Rogers says sorry twice and Bob Rogers under fire, are just some of them.
Rogers made the newspaper posters so often that one of his four daughters once wrote publicly about the anguish it had caused her, looking out the window of the bus on the way to school and seeing her father's name so often in large type.
Her mother, and Rogers's wife of 49 years, the elegant, feisty Jerry Rogers, says two of the four girls suffered terribly, particularly at school, because of their father's high profile. They have all benefited from it financially, of course, and also from Jerry's skill in real estate investment.
Financial security was everything to Rogers, the son of a poor soldier settler in Victoria. "I don't think I was in it for the fame, because I realised that fame was not going to pay the rent, and all through my television career I hung on to radio because I always knew my real career was radio."
Unlike Laws, Rogers was not a natural talkback host. He says: "I missed the bus. I called it back-fence gossip and believed we professionals were handing our profession over to it. I still feel like that with some of it. I was never very good at talkback anyway. I'm too easily swayed by other people's arguments and if a little old lady rang me I couldn't say, 'Piss off, you silly old woman'. I can't do it."
In 1980, Rogers took a partial break from radio to open a fashion shop which became a chain of six and lasted 12 years. He says he finished this venture "not too badly off".
Investments also helped cushion the family when an accountant took them down for many thousands of dollars - along with others - and went to jail. Rogers estimates that he also lost "millions of dollars" by selling his shares in Triple M too soon.
Rogers, who has never been into conspicuous consumption, drives a family sedan and has no garage for it at his home. The Rogers house, perched high above Balmoral Beach, is old, large, charming, full of the ambience of a busy family and with views out through the heads.
"Instead of a garage we have a vegetable patch," says Jerry, "where Bob grows mostly greens."
This is a gesture to their health. At the age of 41, Rogers developed hardening of the arteries. He stopped drinking, lost weight, gave up lunches "and, in about three months, when we were due to buy this house, I was given a clean bill of health".
He watches his health closely, plays tennis three times a week, eats a lot of fish and suffers from hypochondria because his life is now so wonderful that he's afraid something will go wrong.
John Singleton has figured large in his life. In 1977, when Rogers was on the 2GB morning program and wanted to break his contract, his old friend came to his rescue to help get him sacked.
Rogers admits now it was a set-up, when Singleton rang him on the air, used the f-word and procured instant dismissal for Rogers, who allowed it to go to air. It made the front page of The Sun, a Fairfax tabloid then.
Eighteen months later, Rogers accidentally dropped the same word on the afternoon program on 2UE - with the same result. He was devastated. "They wanted to get rid of me and it was a great shock," he says.
Of Singleton, now his boss, Rogers says: "I love him. He's unique and very interesting. He plays a lot of hunches and they don't all work. The appointment of Kerri-Anne Kennerley to host the breakfast program as well as running 2CH was the great example. He gives his mates jobs. I'm one of his mates and so is Gibbo [Mike Gibson]."
His move to 2CH in November 1995 was accompanied by controversy.
In 1993, Rogers had been in semi-retirement from radio when 2UE's program director John Brennan, gave his career a much-needed push. He hired him to host the Sunday morning program. Rogers repaid him by lifting the program to No. 1 almost immediately.
When Singleton persuaded Rogers to join 2CH, Brennan had not been informed of Rogers's imminent departure or the fact that he was due to start at 2CH the following Monday, until I mentioned it to Brennan by chance late on the Friday.
Brennan had little time to get a replacement for Rogers for the Sunday morning.
Rogers says now there had been a change of plans and Singleton wanted him to start earlier than they had arranged. He says: "Singo rang and said, 'We've got to go now but we don't want 2UE to know about it because as soon as we announce it they'll start putting us down.' "
Rogers says he was told not to ring Brennan until midday on the Saturday.
An almost compulsive talker who has used this characteristic to considerable advantage all his professional life, Rogers nearly came undone on his first morning on 2CH by talking too much.
Hundreds of listeners complained, many demanding his instant removal, but he immediately adapted his style and went on to win the ears of the station's dedicated music fans.
He says, "I seem to have an anecdote for everything," but knows now that he has to keep most of them to himself until he's off the air.
Peter Wall, manager of ABC Local Radio NSW, gives one reason for the continuing popularity of Rogers: "Bob Rogers belongs to a handful of voices we all grew up with and who will always be part of the Australian scene even when they are gone. His voice has the ability to step right into the room with you."
Rogers says simply: "People listen to me and I remind them of those 1950s and 1960s which, as they look back to them, were such wonderful years."
And at 71 going on 72, he adds pragmatically: "It's easy and I don't have to talk much."
STAR BILLING
FULL-page press advertisements on March 16, 1958, trumpeted in large black type: "WELCOME BOB ROGERS, Australia's greatest disc jockey has come to Sydney. Here is a radio sensation ... a fascinating new personality who has the secret of how to capture and hold interest ... " They went on to list the times panting Sydneysiders could hear the man from Brisbane who was set to change their thinking about disc jockeys: 6-6.30pm Monday to Thursday, 8.30-9pm Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday and Sunday morning.
The 2UE Official Top 40 records listed April Love as number one, followed by Twelfth of Never, Peggy Sue, Oh Boy!, Chances Are, Catch a Falling Star and Great Balls of Fire with, as number 40, Witchcraft.
Serials running on 2UE's mornings - 10 of them in quarter-hour instalments - began at 8.30 with Life Can Be Beautiful, "the ever popular story with a heartwarming message for all", and included tear-jerkers such is This is My Son, the story of "mixed babies! how would such a problem affect any mother?" At 9.45am came Markhams of Four Winds, "the taut story of Delia Markham and the conflict of her desires".
By May 24 the same year, Rogers was being billed as the "ace star disc jockey" playing the "honour roll of hits" with, at the bottom of the ad in small type, a hint of things to come: "2UE now plays the Top Forty tunes - presented by John Laws 7.30pm to midnight every Saturday".
THE GOOD, THE BAD AND THE UGLY
WHILE Bob Rogers is restricted in his on-air comments by the more music/less talk format for easy-listening music station 2CH, he still has plenty to say off-air.
He says the reoccurring feud between himself and John Laws is over - at least, enough for Laws to attend the big party John Singleton gave Rogers for his 70th birthday in 1996.
However, the morning 2UE announced that Laws had been taken ill on February 2, his first day back at work, and was being rushed to hospital for an operation, Rogers allowed himself a gentle crack on the air about his old friend and rival. "Now I realise why I've been a failure - I've enjoyed good health."
Off-air, he said: "Lawsy is unique - unassailable. I've got to hand it to him. I mean it wasn't a major operation. He milks [things like that] magnificently - with front pages of [some] newspapers and five minutes on the television news: everyone knows that Lawsy's back and he's going on-air. He's just marvellous. Very lucky as well as very clever."
Rogers described Alan Jones as "extraordinary - with enormous mental energy - and he's very reactionary. It seems all successful talkback hosts are, and redneck is the audience they attract. He does make some mistakes and I find it offensive to hear a middle-aged, unmarried man pontificating on family values and how to rear kids. I mean, his family might have done a good job with him but times have changed enormously since then. As every parent knows, there is peer group pressure and theory is one thing. We're a happy family today but several of our kids had terrible problems growing up."
Rogers said he enjoyed listening to Mike Carlton on 2BL because he thought "he was right there". He said Carlton had always supported rugby union but now he was having to talk about rugby league as well on 2UE. "I think Michael sold out, and why not? There was a very big difference between the money he was getting at the ABC and what he's earning now. It's not for me to be holier than thou because I've been an old whore all my life; I've done what was required."
Of Andrew Denton on Triple M's breakfast program, Rogers praised his "very original and fertile mind", but added: "These boys are being paid big money but he's done nothing yet [in the radio ratings]. I do regret the amount of dirty humour in the program; it's all part of living today and kids don't see it as such, but I just feel Andrew Denton is worthy of better things than giving away vibrating panties - and a girl even tried them on on the air. It's a bit hard for my generation to come to terms with, that's all."
The outspoken Rogers does not criticise his 2GB colleague Graham Richardson, but he sees a problem for the former Labor senator: "I think public perceptions are important and I think the public perception of Graham is a little like the perception people have of Bob Hawke. After enjoying a very high profile with the Labor Party - which used to mean the working classes - in the public mind, at least, each quickly embraced the rich and famous.
"The sad thing is the successful talkback hosts in Australia and the US have always been perceived as right-wing rednecks. I don't know why this is but this perception has put Graham behind the eight-ball right from the start."
© 1998 Sydney Morning Herald