Carrington Clark

This was supposed to underpin the financial success of the network.

And yet now it does look like perhaps they became too big a cost to carry.

And there was a lot of behind the scenes, but also some of it public.

Action against the network when it came to advertising dollars and a really orchestrated campaign going after Kyle and Jackie O for some of the more controversial commentary.

And what we hear from the ARN board is that actually it was hurting their bottom line, that they weren't getting the advertising dollars that they thought they should be getting.

This wasn't a pep talk.

This wasn't a man talking about the exciting opportunities coming.

This was somebody who seemed kind of on the defensive.

And perhaps you could have argued at the time that the contract was signed that if you could take this breakfast program national and you had the same kind of numbers around the nation that you were seeing in Sydney, then perhaps you can justify spending $200 million on these two stars over 10 years.

The problem was it hadn't worked in Melbourne, obviously the other big metro market for them.

There was obviously therefore questions about whether or not this was a product that you could move across the rest of the country.

And traditionally...

it's very hard to get breakfast radio to work around the country.

Most people want to hear their local insights from people who are living in the same city as them and interacting with them.

And so I think, unfortunately, if that was the model, it came a cropper.

Now, obviously, there is the dispute between Carl and Jackie O, this

very public falling out of two people who've worked together for so many years and had been very close.

They're both taking legal action to try to get paid out for their contracts.

Obviously, ARN is trying to defend that position because that would be a massive blow to them.

But they also need to just put this behind them, don't they?