In 2007 John Laws is considered by some people to have overstayed by a couple of years.

In 2003 Laws should have hung up the golden microphone. He had nothing left to prove and could have walked away with the 'radio legend folklore' intact.

Industry insiders say Laws is well aware that his ratings reign is over and is hanging on to a trump card that his program generates more income for 2UE than any other on the station. (via it's advertising and networking)

Radiorumours also asks how deep is the rift (what rift?) between 2UE management and John Laws?

The Laws should have walked views are shared by 2GB's Ray Hadley and the following story from The Bulletin gives an interesting insight.

Ray Hadley used to fill in for John Laws. He admits Laws' show was the basis for his own. "Because he thinks I've pinched a lot of his ideas. I've pinched all of his ideas, not some of them ... everything good about his show I've pinched."

Now he regularly beats "the king". Hadley says Laws should have quit three years ago. "He hasn't beaten me since the first survey of 2004 - three years unbeaten and the first survey of 2007. So not even he can be resurrected now ... has he got the desire to get up at 4.30 and get in there at 6 o'clock, and that's what it's about. You can't prepare a three-hour program on a one-hour preparation. If he's on at nine, he's got to be in there at six. And he's not doing that; even if he gets in at seven, he's still an hour behind what he needs to do. So no, I think he's gone." (Laws insists most mornings he arrives at work at 6.)

"He has 14 weeks' leave a year now. I pick up the paper this week - the ratings came out, we had a bit of success and I read in one column that John didn't come back ... he was back late. So that's why he went down. Well, that's not really anyone's fault but John's.

"Since the co-driver left ... who had this unbelievable ability to write exactly what Laws thought ... if you listen closely, he will get halfway through an editorial and start to argue with himself, because the editorial has been written not from his angle but from the producer's angle ...

"That's to a certain extent where, you know, Laws has lost it now. And he'll deny this but I worked with him closely for 12 years; I know - and that's why I've had some success."

Hadley attacks Laws over what he says is the continuation of "cash for comment". "It would be different if 2UE didn't pay John, but they're giving him somewhere between $2.5m and $4m a year ... shouldn't someone at 2UE say, listen, mate, really, you know. That's good that you've got a private arrangement but, you know, you're never to mention them on air in any capacity. OK, because we're not getting the money, you are. And the shareholders of Southern Cross are entitled to be dirty, because for every dollar that Qantas, Telstra and all the rest of them spend with John Laws, is dollars they're not spending with, you know, 2UE, 2GB or 2MMM or 2DAY or Channel Nine, Seven or 10.

"The American radio industry nearly fell because in the era of rock'n'roll back in the '50s, you know, a bloke got criminally prosecuted. He was playing records for some obscure band because someone was buying him dinner ... you know, it's payola ... giving a multi-millionaire extra money so he can say, 'They're sponsors of mine', it's obscene. It really is."

What did he think the companies got for the sponsorships? "Bugger all."

Laws responded with fury, saying he got in at 6 every day. "If he [Hadley] hadn't had Alan Jones [as a lead-in], he'd be rooted. If he had a brain he'd do the opposite of what I do, not the same. I think he's got very limited talent. I think he's stupid. He was known as a boofhead at 2UE.

"All the shareholders [of Telstra] can go to the website and see exactly why they pay that money. I constantly have meetings with them to get updated on what they are doing. I had lunch only last week with the big American guy [Phil Burgess, Telstra's head of corporate relations]." Laws says he does ads for Qantas every day.