We’re on the home stretch now as we look at another surprising Gold nominee – Sam Mac.
Before he became a regular on our screens, Mac got his start on radio. Starting out on local Adelaide station Fresh 92.7, he got his big radio break when he won the SAFM ‘Who Wants to be a Co-Host’ on Air competition, doing swing announcing on SAFM and TripleM Adelaide. In December 2002, he began hosting his own evening slot on SAFM.
As part of TripleM, he hosted ‘The Freq Show’ with Imogen Bailey, before hosting the afternoon drive at the end of 2005. In 2006 he was promoted to anchor SAFM Breakfast program Milly and Lehmo, where he stayed until he moved to Sydney.
His radio career continued in Sydney were he hosted various shows on Sydney’s TripleM station and was a panel operator and segment contributor on the Wil & Lehmo show. In 2009 he became a full-time host on the Em and Sam Mac Show in Perth on 92.9. In 2010, this continued to become the Lisa, Baz and Sam show until Mac resigned at the end of 2011 to pursue television opportunities.
From 2012, Mac was seen regularly on The Project (or 7pm Project as it was then called), as a field reported and fill-in host. He continued his field reporting on Ten’s breakfast show Wake Up until the show was eventually axed due to poor ratings. However, this wouldn’t be his last shot at breakfast television.
In 2014 he was a co-host of The Thursday Night Sports Show live on Channel One with Mel McLaughlin. His sport enthusiasm has also seen him be a regular on Googly Box and one half of the Comedy Football Team The B-League. He also injected his own flavor into the 2014 Glasgow Commonwealth Games coverage for Ten.
During their inaugural 2015 season of I’m A Celebrity… Get Me Out of Here!, an online series called Fall Out Zone (affectionately known as FOZ) gave viewers a chance to watch the live feed of celebrities and chat about the events of the show with its co-hosts Mac and producer Ciaran Flannery.
Mac returned to breakfast television when he took over as Sunrise’s weather presenter from Edwina Bartholomew in 2016. Notable achievements from the past three and a half years in this role include re-releasing a rap version Nikki Webster’s iconic hit ‘Strawberry Kisses’, bungee jumping, performing aerial acrobatics in a vintage Tiger Moth plane, and completing an Australian A-Z road trip of towns around the country.
Over the past three years, Mac has also been the narrator of Seven’s First Dates, as well as being co-host on Best Bits!.
Last year, Mac was one of the eight male celebrities to bare all for the first The Real Full Monty, a prime-time special that was to encourage men to visit a doctor and pay better attention to their health. The celebrities, which included Shane Jacobson, Jett Kenny and Kris Smith, performed a stripping routine at Sydney’s Enmore Theatre in front of more than 1000 fans, with the show eventual broadcast on Seven. Sam’s personal connection to the show focused on mental health, a cause close to his heart after the suicide of close friend and former radio colleague Richard Marsland in 2008.
Tomorrow, Sam has a chance at walking away with his first television award, but will he be successful in grabbing the Gold?
