The ABC News Breakfast co-host Virginia Trioli will take over from Jon Faine as presenter of Melbourne’s morning radio show when Faine retires after 23 years at the end of the year.
The announcement on Faine’s show on Tuesday morning is the first of several big hosting decisions the ABC will soon unveil as Q&A, Insiders and now ABC News Breakfast roles are all vacant.
Trioli, a two-time Walkley award winner, has presented Breakfast since 2008 as well as being a regular stand-in host on Q&A, which she was tipped to host when Tony Jones leaves for China this year.
But Trioli has chosen a Melbourne-based radio job in her home town, where she presented the drive program for five years until 2005. She also presented daytime radio in Sydney.
Trioli told Faine it was the only job she wanted because of the thrill of working closely with the Melbourne radio community which she had experienced earlier in her career.
“I am so happy, I am so overwhelmed, I am pinching myself that this opportunity has come along,” she said. “This is a red-letter day for me.”
Asked whether she would miss TV, where she has hosted News Breakfast for 10 years, Trioli said she could finally abandon the high heels and makeup.
“I’m not going to miss the makeup at 3 o’clock in the damn morning,” Trioli said. “These days I may just do it in activewear. There are damn cameras in the studio now, can you get away with it?”
Trioli said she wanted to continue the agenda-setting and community-building program Faine had built up over two decades.
The former foreign correspondent Lisa Millar is the favourite to take over from Trioli on News Breakfast, which may see a new lineup if Trioli’s co-host, Michael Rowland, also gets a new job.
Rowland, a former political reporter, is tipped to take over from Barrie Cassidy on Insiders, although other contenders include the Radio National Breakfast host, Fran Kelly, and the RN Drive host, Patricia Karvelas.
The acting director of ABC regional and local, Judith Whelan, said Trioli would take the program to new heights in 2020, continuing to set the daily agenda in Melbourne, as it has done for the past 23 years.
