Just reviewing the latest round of radio ratings and it appears that the
once mighty Amanda Blair breakfast show on SAFM has had its day. It
continues to slide in the ratings and will be overtaken sometime early in
the new year by the always exciting Keith and Pilko on 5AA. Ok, exciting
might not be the word for those two but anyway....

The much vaunted and endlessly promoted Amanda Blair Breakfast Show was at
its strongest when the program cleverly used supporting talent such as James
Brayshaw and Greg Fleet to prop up a program in which the headline performer
was invariably the weakest link in terms of talent, comedy and likeability.

Lets face it, Amanda's repertoire pretty much consists of a whining
'excuuuuuusssee me James Brayshaw....Greg Fleet', et.al and it gets pretty
tiresome.

More and more over the past year or so, the best bits of the Amanda Blair
Breakfast show have been when Amanda is silent and the supporting talent is
running amok. Further, when she is 'performing' the laughter in the studio
is akin to canned laughter in old TV sitcoms.....listeners are almost fooled
into thinking this woman is funny..i.e 'we can hear the others laughing,
what she is saying must be funny, yes, she must be funny'.

OK, to be fair she does have her moments, but they are few and far between
and hardly enough to justify her headlining of the program in question.
Indeed, the show that bears her name is less and less about her.

'Amanda and James in the morning' was funny because Brayshaw was brilliant.
'The Amanda Blair breakfast show (with Greg Fleet) was acceptable because
Greg Fleet is a funny guy. However, Brayshaw is long gone, though his
occasional guest spots are a highlight, and Fleet is now gone as well. It
will be interesting to see who SAFM now hires in an attempt to prop up their
headline act. They have gone on record today as saying they are confident
about their plans for the breakfast show next year...if they are confident
they must be hiring someone bloody good, or getting rid of Blair, or both.

Everyone's addicted to Blair??? Errr, no they're not. If the latest rating
trends continue, they'll be turning off in droves.