On the Gold Coast on Saturday, the Australian Commercial Radio Awards inducted Adelaide radio titan Jeremy Cordeaux into its Radio Hall of Fame.
Radio figures toasted the veteran broadcaster’s 50-year career, during most of which he topped the radio ratings in Adelaide, where he hosted a morning show for 30 years. He won a Walkley in 1984 for best current affairs program, and he was awarded an Order of Australia in 2006 for services to the radio industry. He currently hosts the afternoons show on FIVEaa.
“Jeremy Cordeaux should have been admitted to the Hall of Fame a long time ago,” said Alan Jones in the introductory video. He was followed by many others who called Cordeaux a “legend” and “consummate professional”.
But one part of Cordeaux’s career wasn’t mentioned during his introduction at the awards night. In the Australian Broadcasting Authority’s report into the 1999 cash for comment scandal, Cordeaux was found to have contributed to a substantial breach of industry codes of practice. In fact, Cordeaux’s deals with companies like Optus and the Adelaide Casino, giving them positive mentions in return for cash in deals that weren’t always disclosed, caused his name to be mentioned no fewer than 116 times in the final ABA report. In this tally, he’s surpassed only by John Laws, who was mentioned by name 119 times. Laws is already a member of the Radio Hall of Fame — he was inducted in 2003.
Crikey asked Commercial Radio Australia, which hosts the ARCAs, about how the Hall of Fame inductees where chosen.
Joan Warner, the CEO of CRA, said:
“Metropolitan and regional, large and small broadcasters from across the country nominate potential Hall of Fame inductees providing detailed background information on their career, experience and history. The Commercial Radio Australia Board made up representatives from across the industry then vote for the final inductee.”
CRA’s board of directors is itself made up of representatives from the major commercial radio companies.
Crikey is committed to hosting lively discussions. Help us keep the conversation useful, interesting and welcoming. We aim to publish comments quickly in the interest of promoting robust conversation, but we’re a small team and we deploy filters to protect against legal risk. Occasionally your comment may be held up while we review, but we’re working as fast as we can to keep the conversation rolling.
The Crikey comment section is members-only content. Please subscribe to leave a comment.
The Crikey comment section is members-only content. Please login to leave a comment.