“There Were Positives And Negatives”: Ben And Liam Reveal Why They Left Triple J
"They definitely wanted us to stay."
Last October, triple j breakfast hosts Ben Harvey and Liam Stapleton announced they would be leaving the plum gig and heading to Nova in Adelaide at the end of the year.
The duo — who had taken over from Matt and Alex at the end of 2016 — told listeners they’d had an “absolute blast” at the station, but didn’t elaborate as to why they were moving on. Now, they have: in a new interview with news.com.au, the duo reveal they left triple j for a couple of reasons, chief among them being they didn’t want to become “too comfortable” in their roles.
“Three years at triple j was a good amount of time,” Ben told news.com.au. “After the three years we kind of felt like we’d ticked all the boxes. At triple j we definitely got very comfortable. If you’re too comfortable that can be a bit of a worry because you start to cruise, and we didn’t want to cruise.”
Stapleton added that the station “definitely wanted” the duo to stay. “It was a tricky decision,” Liam said. “There were positives and negatives for both. It really could have gone either way. But since we’ve made the call we haven’t looked back once and thought, ‘Oh damn, we made the wrong call’.”
The pull of working at a commercial station was strong too, as was the opportunity to head back to their native Adelaide.
“If you want a long-term career in the game, sooner or later you’re going to have to learn how to do commercial radio and be good at it,” Liam aid. “In community radio, ratings don’t matter. At triple j, they try to say it matters but no one really cares…I think we were ready, we want to be on the scoreboard and really get a bit more competitive about things.”
“We loved Sydney but it takes a bit of getting used to…it’s just a lot easier living where you grew up,” he continued. “You walk out of the Nova 91.9 building and you just see someone you know on the street, not because they’re camping out to meet us or anything. Every day I walk home I literally see someone I know. It’s good to be home.”
Read the full news.com.au piece here. The duo have been replaced in the triple j brekky spot by Sally and Erica — check out the full list of new 2020 hosts here.