Campbell, Ross

(Ross Stevenson)

PERSONAL:

Married; children: two sons. Hobbies and other interests: Following Hawthorn Football Club.

ADDRESSES:

Office—3AW Southern Cross Radio Pty. Ltd, 43-49 Bank St., South Melbourne, Victoria 3205, Australia. E-mail—breakfast@3aw.com.au.

CAREER:

Lawyer, radio personality, and author. Darvall McCutcheon (law firm), Melbourne, Australia, former staff; also worked for Slater and Gordon (law firm), during early career; Lawyers, Guns and Money, Radio Station 3RRR, host, beginning 1985; Breakfast, Radio Station 3AW, host, 1991—.

WRITINGS:

(With John Clarke, as Ross Stevenson) A Royal Commission into the Australian Economy, Allen & Unwin (North Sydney, Australia), 1991.

(With John Clarke, as Ross Stevenson) The Games (humor), A.B.C. Books (Sydney, Australia), 1999.

(With John Clarke, as Ross Stevenson) The Games, Series II: Sharing the Blame (humor), A.B.C. Books (Sydney, Australia), 2000.

Also author, under pseudonym Ross Stevenson, of television episodes of The Games, Australian Broadcasting Corporation.

SIDELIGHTS:

Broadcaster and humorist Ross Campbell is best known as Ross Stevenson, the host of the radio program Breakfast with Ross Stevenson and John Clarke, one of Melbourne, Australia's most popular programs. The program's format includes political commentary and criticism, and its "Rumour File" is a source of news items that occasionally become headlines in mainstream news programs. Campbell's role as host of the program for many years has allowed him to command one of the highest salaries offered to a radio host on the continent. "Stevenson's breakfast program with John Burns, which rated 17.9 in the last Nielsen Media Research radio survey," Suzanne Carbone wrote in an article published in the Age, "commands top advertising rates and sets the foundation for the day's ratings. It is said Stevenson would be worth millions more in the Sydney market."

Stevenson is also the coauthor of the television comedy The Games, which satirizes the goings-on of the committee that brought the Olympic Games to Australia. Part of what made the comedy so successful in retrospect was the fact that the activities of the real committee were as outrageous as the satire itself. In fact, "on many occasions," declared a reviewer for the Anarchist Age Weekly Review, "the television series was a pale imitation of the machinations which surrounded the games."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Age, December 16, 2004, Suzanne Carbone, "Meet AW's $10m Man."

Anarchist Age Weekly Review, August 27, 2001, review of The Games.

ONLINE

Jocks' Journal, http://www.jocksjournal.com/ (October 4, 2006), "Put on the Spot: Profiles on Australian Radio Personalities That Jocks' Journal Has ‘Put on the Spot.’"