Jarrod Walsh on his ‘Hunger Games’ sacking from Nova

Jarrod Walsh was one of several hosts whose position was made redundant from NOVA Entertainment recently, with the announcer losing his gig when the network scrapped local Workdays in Brisbane and Adelaide.

After sharing an emotional life update on his own socials, Walsh joined Game Changers: Radio with Craig Bruce to chat about the process of being let go after 16 years with Nova.

“I’ve made peace with what’s happened because I’ve been preparing for it for so long… When other media companies were making redundancies I was really impressed with how Cath O’Connor and the NOVA Entertainment team said ‘What we’re going to do is make everyone take their annual leave’,” Walsh explained.

In saying that, Walsh believes that when it came to Nova providing reasons for his ousting, it was little more than allowing HR to “tick a box”.

“We had a criteria shown to us when it was presented to all the Mornings and Afternoons announcers.

“When we looked at the criteria, and it was presented to us the criteria we fell short in, I said ‘Ok, so obviously this criteria is just here for an HR purpose, so you can tick a box and I don’t expect you to answer that guys’.

“I looked at that criteria and I thought ‘I’m actually skilled in all of those areas’.

“I’ve spoke to the people who kept their jobs… I know how difficult it would have been for those guys for them to reach out. It felt like the Hunger Games to be honest.”

Walsh goes on to say that he was shocked Nova didn’t decide to keep at least one announcer in each market, but thanked Paul Jackson, the company’s chief programming and marketing officer, for calling him after everything went down.

“It was just a lovely conversation, which I don’ reckon everybody would get.”

Listen to the full chat below: