Austereo must rue the day they let Kyle and Jackie O escape from their 2DAY FM studio.
With them, the pair took their listeners, their brand and the station's ratings strong hold and in their wake they left a succession of breakfast presenters who have tumbled as the station tries to figure out how to win those listeners back.
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Rove and Sam Frost booted from breakfast
2DAY FM breakfast show hosts Rove McManus and Sam Frost are ousted from their morning slot after failing to capture an audience in the cut-throat Sydney market.
Love or loathe the Kyle and Jackie O show, they have their radio formula down pat. Be controversial, be a little bit offensive, be regularly offended and make sure you keep yourself in the media.
Despite their efforts Austereo's latest victims, Rove McManus and Sam Frost, have never managed to do any of that, they have barely managed to do good radio.
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And why would anyone have expected them to?
Rove the human and the TV show were made for television. It was a visual medium that made up for the fact that Rove's interviews were dull and his comedy a bit benign.
Rove Live also ended seven years ago and I suspect the affection that remains for Rove is more nostalgic than a burning desire to tune into him every week, let alone every day.
Aside from that the best thing about the show was the team of people he surrounded himself with - particularly Peter Helliar and Carrie Bickmore who still slay it on The Project.
Surrounding him with a reality TV star who had zero presenting experience before putting her in front of the microphone and switching it on was, upon reflection, a bad decision for Austereo.
The pair managed to grow their audience by just 0.8 points across the year. And while that is an admirable effort, their overall final share of 3.8 per cent was a full 6.7 points behind Kyle and Jackie O and only 0.2 points ahead of their predecessors, Dan Debuf and Maz Compton, who were shipped into the wilderness of weekend radio.
Like Dan and Maz, Rove and Sam have also been sent to the wilderness. This time for a national evening show in an act that appears to be to save face rather than admit their gamble didn't pay off.
Part of the mistake Austereo have made here is the peculiar lack of understanding that radio is a specialised medium. Not everyone is capable of doing it.
Reality stars are notoriously bad at radio, Chrissie Swan being the wonderful exception. Someone having been on the telly might make them interesting for five minutes and may provide a momentary boost in ratings, but before too long listeners can't bare to hear about their dull post-telly lives for a second more and switch the dial.
Despite having leapt to notoriety via the medium of reality TV (Australian Idol. You won't be alone if you've forgotten), Em Rusciano has served her apprenticeship through radio gigs in Perth an on a national Sunday night show alongside honing her banter skills in cabaret shows. What a funny world.
What Austereo needs to come to grips with is that they lost the radio golden egg, they let it slip into the hands of a rival and now they must pay for it.
They, too, must spend their time in the wilderness and learn from their initial mistake and the series of mistakes they have made since.
The 2DAY FM breakfast show is a poisoned chalice. Whoever takes it will be compared to Kyle and Jackie O and the veritable sushi train of presenters who have gone before them and they have everything against them to succeed.
But if Austereo just sit and wait and focus on making good radio, stick to a breakfast show for more than a minute and wait for their turn to come around again, they might just stand a chance.
Kyle and Jackie O didn't start by dominating the ratings.