Game Changers
BY Zanda Wilson November 20, 2019
Game Changers February 6, 2018
“I liked Christian from the moment I met him”: Craig Bruce on why Christian O’Connell is fit for Australian radio
The good stuff always happens when the microphones are turned off.
It was September 2016 and I had just finished talking to Christian O’Connell for the UK series of the Game Changers podcast.
I liked Christian from the moment I met him. He’s a radio guy – has loved it with a passion since he was a teenager, and has been living the dream from the moment he first went to air.
The off-air banter that day started with some small talk – we both knew Phil Dowse, we both loved working with Hamish and Andy, we both loved Melbourne… oh, “and by the way Craig, I would love to work in Australia”.
My first reaction was “you crazy Englishman, why would you give up a number one show in London?!”.
Here’s the thing with Christian. Listen to the podcast (I need the numbers, it helps with the rankings in iTunes…) and I challenge you to not have a very positive view of him by the end of it. He’s unbelievably likeable.
He’s also funny, he’s smart, he loves radio, he loves Australian radio and our creativity as an industry. I think he thinks we might be one of the strongest radio territories in the world.
That’s one of the reasons he’s coming – so he can slug it out in an incredibly competitive market against some of the biggest stars in Australian media. (And because it’s too fucking cold and wet in London for any normal functioning human).
However, none of this will matter in June when his voice comes through the speakers in the kitchen of a Gold P1 listener getting ready for work in Waverley. To them, he’ll just be some strange Pommy guy.
Will they give him a chance? Will they stay for the music and grow to like him? Or will they run to the open arms of Eddie, Fifi, Chrissie and Sam?
Christian knows how big the challenge is. He knows that it’s going to take every bit of two, maybe three years, to build an audience in Melbourne.
What an unbelievable result it will be if he manages to pull it off.
I for one wish him well.
Enjoy the pod.
He’s nice, funny, talented, loves radio…great.
There’s no Australian that is nice, funny, talented, loves radio?
It’s one thing bringing an aussie and a kiwi from NZ, but this is next level.
This is like replacing Kochie and Sam with Phillip Schofield
Christian will be as successful as a Married at First Sight couple.
And then someone who’s unable to cook (and throws Michelin meals in the bin) will go shopping for yet another dish someone else prepared earlier.
Stop wearing my caps please
Christian is great, he doesn’t have a no1 show in London, he does ok. Bringing a Pommy to Australian Radio is fine. We welcomed Ugly Phil, although he didnt cut it. We welcomed Mike Carlton and Alan Freeman and Barry Aldis (ask your mums and dads). I am a Pom and work on community radio and people like what I do as it is a little different to what they normally hear. Embrace the multiculturalism that is Radio.