The David Oldfield switcheroo is confirmed

(Credit: Samuel’s Blog

Sam’s blog is carrying an interesting story this morning about ex-2GB’s David Oldfield. He seems to have joined the 2UE bunker! Apparently, David will be filling in for The Two Murrays from May 3rd to May 7th, and then for two weeks commencing May 10th for Stuart Bocking.

This is really interesting – and what makes it so is that on the eve of this happening, 2UE’s program director, Greg Byrnes, has resigned to take up a senior role over at Sky News. Is it just coincidence the program director resigns just as someone comes over from 2GB to do fill-in’s, and losing the prodigal son back to 2GB (Jim Ball)?

Poor Jim has gotten so used to saying 2UE’s number of 13 13 32 that it crossed 2GB a few times since he’s been back and I must admit a grin crosses my face when he realises his mistake and has a chuckle about it all.

If you also haven’t caught up yet, 3MTR, 2GB’s melbourne talk station has launched, and not without some teething troubles it would seem. I must say I’m not quite used to hearing Chris Smith’s show set up for network and at the end time for Sydney listeners only hearing the theme play out. Still, it’s probably just that, needing to get used to it. I’ve been reading on various forums lately though that some are having trouble hearing it in various parts down there, presumably there’s a transmitter problem they’ve gotta fix or when it was 3MP they didn’t have enough power to begin with. Or the tower’s facing a certain way when it should be facing another. Who knows. Checking out 3MP’s tx site on google earth (and I don’t know if it’s the same set up now) it does seem like it could do with a little improving – am I wrong in saying 3MP and the defunct rock of melbourne 3XY shared a transmitter site? (shared in this instance meaning the same block of land rather than two stations on the same tower, ala 2SM and 2UE up here).

Whatever the case may be I wish MTR all the best, it’s a decent line-up but I wonder how long melbourne will put up with Sydney-only issues.