Bob Carr, “Complaints end up on compost heap as profits rise,”
The Bulletin, December 15, 1981, pp. 30-32.

Barrie Unsworth, secretary of the Labor Council of NSW and general manager of its radio station, 2KY (the two jobs have gone together since the unions bought their radio licence in 1925), sits in his office where he has received another letter from an ALP branch complaining about ex-advertising guru and ocker reactionary John Singleton. Unsworth carefully feeds the letter into the jaws of his Adler shredding machine, into which numerous similar complaints have vanished since Singleton became a 2KY personality a year ago. Each week he takes a bag full of shredded letters home to tip on his compost heap.

Ten floors down in the Labor Council building, Singleton — the producer of anti-Labor television ads, founder of the Workers’ Party and author of an anti-union petition — is engaged in his daily, 9am to noon, “lay-back, mumble-back” radio talk-fest. His contract with the Labor Council’s wireless committee, which acts as 2KY’s board of directors, bars him from anti-Labor, anti-union comments.

But it leaves him free to cross the boundary of the risque and zany and lunge deep into the territory of monumental bad taste.

The other day, for example, there were four Romanian hunger strikers camped outside the building and Singleton started an on-air sweep based on which one would die first. A phone-caller asked him how the station got its name and Singleton replied it was the first station in the world to be named after a lubricating jelly: “We’re the in-out radio station.”

A woman who rang to complain that she was sold a faulty battery received some dark hints that her sex life depended on a vibrator.

The 2KY decision to broadcast Singleton was condemned by an ACTU media conference in April last year after delegates from the Teachers’ Federation called Singleton “a mouthpiece for the ruling class.” Even in Unsworth’s home territory, the State ALP conference, a motion condemning Singleton was defeated only by 40 votes. Last year it took two meetings of the board to clear his appointment.

Unsworth says the Labor movement’s dalliance with the millionaire was his “greatest political gamble.”

Last week he was quoting the latest radio ratings to vindicate the experiment.

According to the quarterly McNair-Anderson radio survey, 2KY’s ratings in the competitive Sydney market rose from 7 percent to 8.2 percent, its highest ever. In August the station had come equal last with 2GB; now it has passed 2SM, 2WS, 2UW and 2CH. The engine for the improvement was Singleton’s increasing share of the morning audience (from 3 to 7 percent since taking charge of his timeslot) and, even more, Ron Casey’s hold on 9.4 percent of the breakfast audience. (Last week the Australian Broadcasting Tribunal asked 2KY to comment on complaints about Casey’s statements on Asian immigration, women’s rights and his use of the word “poofter.”)

The latest rating figures were a disaster for Fairfax-owned 2GB, which is last among the nine commercial stations and has become the first AM station to be overtaken by two of the FM broadcasters.

The new 2KY format is not just Singleton and Casey. There is Mike Gibson. He and Casey appear on Channel 9 sporting programs and thus give their radio outlets an extra dimension. Country and western music, a format planned by Singleton in July, and exhaustive racing coverage are the other legs of the tripod. Gone are Mama Lena’s Italian programs and the paid hours of American evangelising, formerly among the station’s hallmarks.

Says Unsworth: “It all fits in with the demographic we’re trying to satisfy. The more educated are talking about the ABC’s Clive Robertson, but the working class talk about Casey and Singleton. My brother-in-law’s a truckie. He says that when you pull up at traffic lights, every truck has 2KY on. It’s got a cult of devotees; the country and western music is all part of that.”

The finances of the station have been turned around. In 1973 it could no longer make grants to the Labor Council. Last year the station had a $500,000 deficit on top of losses piled up through the 70s. This looked like compelling the Labor Council to either sell the station for the value of its debts or call on the unions to put more money into it, a neat reversal of the situation in which 2KY once subsidised unionism.

Says Unsworth: “We were faced with the awful commercial decision of having to make it pay. In two or three years it would have racked up such a loss we would have had to sell it.”

Last month the situation notched its first monthly profit since the early 70s and management is forecasting a profit of a quarter million in the current financial year, with income rising from $1.5 to $2.5 million. Money will begin to flow from the enterprise to the unions again.

Singleton strengthening the sinews of trade unionism? He receives 20 percent of his program’s advertising revenue and is busy promoting it to advertisers with Press advertisements under the slogan: “How to Get Radio Rich.” The ideological compromise seems to suit the millionaire Rightist as much as the owners of the once-sinking radio station.

Says Unsworth: “Singleton is central to our activity because he’s so expert in marketing and selling advertising.” The Labor Council secretary claims he’ll continue to put critical letters from ALP branches through the shredder and take the tatters home for compost. He says he’s looking forward to the next ALP conference when his critics try to carry a motion recommending the Labor Council sack Singleton.

When he speaks in that debate he’s planning to use, among other things, a quote someone gave him about Pravda endorsing country and western music as the legitimate art form of the American workers.