{"id":226622,"date":"2025-10-20T04:18:08","date_gmt":"2025-10-20T04:18:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/226622\/"},"modified":"2025-10-20T04:18:08","modified_gmt":"2025-10-20T04:18:08","slug":"rip-kevin-blyton","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/226622\/","title":{"rendered":"RIP Kevin Blyton"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/p>\n

The Capital Radio Network has announced that Kevin Blyton, owner of the network\u00a0and the Blyton Group of companies died on Sunday October 19 at Cooma Hospital, after suffering a cardiac arrest.<\/p>\n

Kevin purchased his first radio station, 2XL when he was just of 19 in 1978. The Capital Radio Network now includes XLFM and SNOW FM in the Snowy Mountains, 3GG in Gippsland, 2CA and 2CC in Canberra, GNFM and EAGLE FM in Goulburn, 6iX in Perth and associated digital stations including 60s Music and 70s Music. He was inducted into the Commercial Radio Hall of Fame in 2013 (pictured).<\/p>\n

He diversified into hospitality around his beloved 2XL by purchasing the Charlotte Pass and Selwyn Snow Resorts, the Snowy Mountains Airport in Cooma, Kosciusko Chalet Hotel as well as local transport services & cinemas. If you happened to be a resident of the NSW Snowy Mountains you were as likely to be served by him to get cinema tickets as meet with him in the board room. He was always hands on.<\/p>\n

This writer personally worked for him for eight years. At the outbreak of Covid when we were all scared for our jobs, Kevin organised for a live call to all stations and told us that none of us would be going anywhere, he was make sure that we were looked after. This was just after the Black Summer bushfires of January 2020 which did catastrophic damage to Selwyn, leading to a rebuild over the next five years.<\/p>\n

He said:<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cOver 500 people work across the group. Not one person lost their job, had hours cut or wages cut because of Covid.<\/p>\n

Radio gets me out of bed everyday just as it has for over 45 years now. I don\u2019t feel any legacy. But commercial radio has been very good to me \u2013 I am very lucky.\u201d<\/p>\n

Kevin Blyton is survived by his daughter, Lucy Blyton-Gray, and does leave an immense legacy across the broadcasting, leisure and hospitality industries.<\/p>\n

Jen Seyderhelm is a writer, editor and podcaster.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Capital Radio Network has announced that Kevin Blyton, owner of the network\u00a0and the Blyton Group of companies…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":226623,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[64,63,134,136],"class_list":["post-226622","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-music","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-entertainment","tag-music"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/226622","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=226622"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/226622\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/226623"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=226622"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=226622"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=226622"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}