Basil Zempilas farewells radio rival Fred Botica, complete with impersonation of the ‘great man’

Former Editor & Content Director
Basil Zempilas

Basil Zempilas spent the final moments of his Triple M Perth Breakfast show this morning farewelling radio rival Fred Botica.

Just prior to the radio ratings release this morning, Australian Radio Network (ARN) announced Fred Botica would be stepping down from 96FM Breakfast, thus retiring the Botica’s Bunch brand.

In his place, former Mix 94.5 co-host Dean ‘Clairsy’ Clairs will join Lisa Shaw to form The Bunch. 

Zempilas and co-hosts Jenna Clarke and Xavier Ellis recalled how rumours of this move were first aired on their Triple M show.

They then retrieved Botica’s 2018 book Sure Beats Working, with Zempilas reading an extract in his best Botica voice, before joking “I can’t work out why the book didn’t sell that well”.

He did, however, then take a more serious approach to the retirement of his radio rival, saying: “Jokes aside… he has been a great of our industry. He’s been a mainstay of the two radio stations in this building for a long, long, long long time, and he’s a great man and we do wish him all the very best for his retirement. Well done, Fred Botica. He has had an amazing career.”

Triple M is owned by ARN rival Southern Cross Austereo (SCA), which recently introduced the Triple M brand to the market.

ARN’s 96FM with Botica had an 8.9% share in Breakfast in today’s results, up 0.6 points from last survey, while Triple M had 7.7%. This was Triple M’s first survey in the market. The previous station on the 92.9 frequency, Hit 92.9, had a 9.0% share on its last outing.

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Loris
12 Mar 2021 - 12:44 pm

Pretty sad when the best content they can come up with is about another station…

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