Confirmed: Wil Anderson won’t return to The Hot Breakfast in 2020

Radio host and comedian Wil Anderson won’t return to The Hot Breakfast on Triple M Melbourne next year.

Host of the Wilosophy podcast and face of ABC’s long-running show Gruen, Anderson will instead focus on his lucrative touring business and TV projects in 2020.

The Hot Breakfast’s last show of 2019 was Friday (December 6).

“Today is my last day on The Hot Breakfast,” he said in the show’s last break today.

“It was an amazing challenge to fill the shoes of Mick Molloy, who is a great hero of mine. And one of the greatest comedic and radio talents in the country.

“I could not have felt more included here, from top to bottom. The management here in the building are just absolutely incredible to me.”

Anderson, who replaced Mick Molloy in October 2017 to join Eddie McGuire and Luke Darcy, has been in negotiations with Southern Cross Austereo for months about his future on the show.

Radio Today understands those talks stalled and after a report by Herald Sun columnist Fiona Byrne last week, some executives scurried for a “Plan B”, according to sources.

Summer Breakfast co-host Anthony ‘Lehmo’ Lehmann “is one of the options”, they added.

Anderson is a top-tier talent with a premium price tag. As budgets shrink, radio networks may struggle to secure comedians who can earn top-dollar on the touring circuit while sleeping in.

This week SCA will cut up to 90 jobs across its metro and regional business as the company looks to tighten its purse strings amid shrinking media spends.

“[Wil] can make a lot of money doing standup without the Breakfast hours,” said another source. “But SCA would have a problem with the current ratings, hasn’t really gone well since Mick left.”

The station secured a 6.5% share of listening overall (+0.3) in the latest GfK radio ratings, making it the fifth most listened to station on the Melbourne FM leaderboard, with KIIS FM trailing.

Talking to Radio Today after Survey 7 results last month, Triple M boss Mike Fitzpatrick (Pictured) was openly concerned about the show’s performance.

“Any programmer that looks at that Melbourne figure and says ‘the stations gone up top 6.5 and Breakfast went down from a 6 to a 5.5’ wouldn’t be happy with it,” he admits.

The Hot Breakfast with Eddie McGuire was down to a 5.5% share of listening (-0.5) but is showing promising growth in cume, which the network head puts down to a “TSL problem”.

“However, there are good signs in there; a 35,000 cume increase into the Breakfast show would indicate to me that it’s a TSL problem.

“It’s been a bit of a trend this year, with the Hot Breakfast trending off, and we’ve spent a lot of time with Eddie, Wil and Darce talking about those figures, and how we’re going to get them back to where they need to be.

“Everyone is on board, and everyone is rowing in the same direction.”

After yesterday’s announcement that former radio flames Lehmann and Brigitte Duclos would reunite to host Summer Breakfast on Triple M, many radio heads believe they are front runners to replace Anderson.

Lehmo previously hosted Breakfast with Duclos for six years at Mix 101.1 and Gold FM.