source SMH

Spare a thought for Judith Lucy. It's hard to imagine a tougher job in radio than finding yourself at the helm of a failing breakfast show, with the future of the station resting on your shoulders. When that station is 2Day FM, the biggest money-spinner in the Austereo stable and, until this year, market leader for more than a decade, it must be even tougher.

Not only does Lucy have to cope with the personal rejection (more than 100,000 listeners have left the breakfast show since she replaced Wendy Harmer in January), she also finds herself wearing the responsibility for 2Day's dramatic fall from first to seventh place in the Sydney market.

She shares the job, of course, with co-hosts Kaz Cooke and Peter Helliar, but 2Day has made it clear Lucy is the linchpin. The show has dropped to a 5.6 per cent share (353,000 weekly listeners), a long way from Nova's Merrick and Rosso, who lead the FM market with 11.1 per cent (533,000 weekly listeners).

"It really comes down to getting a couple more ratings points in breakfast to get us back on top," 2Day's general manager, Patrick Joyce, says. "We've got strong work-day listening. Hot 30 is doing well at night nationally. Kyle and Jackie are a fraction off winning the drive slot. It's all about breakfast. That's not being simplistic. That's radio."

On paper, Lucy was the ideal choice to replace Harmer. A sassy, female stand-up comic with radio experience and a national profile from her film and TV appearances. But outside of 2Day, it seems almost everyone in Sydney radio has an opinion on why the show isn't working.

One programmer thinks it comes down to Lucy's nasal tones - too harsh and confronting. Another thinks her delivery is too formal and not conversational enough. Yet another thinks she's a little too hip and too Melbourne to appeal to the average Sydney family. It would help if she was married with children, he muses, so she could talk about her family like Wendy did. "I still imagine Judith in a bar at night with a drink in hand, not at my breakfast table."

They seem to forget that Harmer herself was an unmarried Melbourne stand-up comedian before she joined 2Day.

Lucy's biggest problem is one she can't do much about. Breakfast radio is habitual and listeners take it personally when their routine is disrupted. It takes a long time to win back their loyalty. It took Andrew Denton two years at Triple M before he could claim any real success, and Nova's Merrick and Rosso were stuck on 7 per cent for more than a year before taking the lead. Joyce says it's certainly not a case of, "Oh, my God, we made a huge mistake."

"We don't believe there's anything in Judith which is preventing her from connecting with the audience. It's a work in progress and it's just going to take time."

2Day hopes to accelerate that process over the next few months with a

co-ordinated marketing campaign. Meanwhile, barring a voice operation or rushing into motherhood, Lucy is just going to have to shut out the critics and focus on the task ahead.