BOB ROGERS: 1926-2024 Sydney radio would not have been the same without Bob Rogers and won’t be quite the same again. He was one of the first to play popular music, the first to have a Top 40 show and one of the first to fight for announcers to get proper pay and secure contracts. He went on working into his 80s, chatting, gossiping, playing music that people liked and having a good time on air.
Bob Rogers at 2CH radio station in 2011. He was still working until 2018 after a life of being up and down in the ratings, twice fired for letting swear words on air and retiring more times than anyone could count. He also showed he had more than the traditional “good head for radio” by doing two television programs and posing naked, twice, as a Cleo centrefold.
Rogers joined The Beatles on tour in Australia in 1964. Credit: Archive He didn’t take nonsense and could be quick to move if he thought he was being exploited, but could also take time to telephone and congratulate people whose work he had enjoyed. He was called egotistical and a diva and his voice was sometimes likened to a cockatoo, yet every interview with him praised his charm, good manners and love of family.
Rogers was born in December 1926 on a farm near Donald in Victoria and remembered the day his parents bought a radio, which entranced him. The family moved on to Melbourne and he got a job at 3XY on 19/6 a week. By 1949, he was in Sydney on £8/10/0 a week (£2 above the basic wage) but overslept one day and.