Michael "Tunny" Tunn (born 18 January 1974) is an Australian radio announcer and television presenter. He was hired by Australia's national youth station

Triple J Triple J is an Australian government-funded national radio station founded in 1975 as a division of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC). It aims to appeal to young listeners of alternative music, and plays far more Australian conten ...

in 1991 at the age of 17, making him Australia's youngest professional radio presenter at the time.

Biography

Tunn was born and raised in

Adelaide Adelaide ( , ; ) is the list of Australian capital cities, capital and most populous city of South Australia, as well as the list of cities in Australia by population, fifth-most populous city in Australia. The name "Adelaide" may refer to ei ...

. He got his start in radio presenting 'Rock and Roll High School', a requests program for high school students, on

Triple M Triple M is an Australian commercial radio network owned and operated by Southern Cross Austereo. The network consists of 45 radio stations with flagship stations broadcasting a mainstream/classic rock music format in Sydney, Melbourne, and B ...

. (Triple M was renamed to

Three D Radio Three D Radio (call sign: 5DDD) is a community radio station based in Adelaide, Australia and located in St Peters, South Australia. Established as 5MMM in 1979, it broadcasts on 93.7 MHz across the greater metropolitan area of Adelaide and ...

.) Triple J hired him on 25 August 1990 as part of a major change to its lineup of presenters. The decision to hire Tunn attracted a high amount of media attention. He was, however, unable to go on air at the station until he completed high school. After completing school, Tunn moved to Sydney, where the station's studios were located and presented midnight to dawn shows over the Australian summer until be was given his own requests program, called 'J-Klub', in February 1991 when he was 17 years old. In May 1991, he also began hosting ''

The Afternoon Show ''The Afternoon Show'' is Raidió Teilifís Éireann's former live flagship daytime show. It ran from 2004 until May 2010. The programme was dropped by RTÉ as part of its new season of television in 2010, to be replaced by two afternoon progr ...

'' on the

ABC ABC are the first three letters of the Latin script. ABC or abc may also refer to: Arts, entertainment and media Broadcasting * Aliw Broadcasting Corporation, Philippine broadcast company * American Broadcasting Company, a commercial American ...

television station. By 1995, when Tunn was aged 21, he had presented shows on almost all of Triple J's shifts. He hosted Triple J's evening request program '' The Request Fest'' between 1992 and 1997, and was also the presenter of the

Australian Broadcasting Corporation The Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) is Australia’s principal public service broadcaster. It is funded primarily by grants from the federal government and is administered by a government-appointed board of directors. The ABC is ...

's children's TV program ''The Afternoon Show'' during the early to mid 1990s. In 1993 he hosted the documentary series '' Bodybeat''. Tunn quit Triple J in late 1999. At this time, he was the station's assistant music director, but was reportedly frustrated by a lack of promotion opportunities. In June 2000, he joined bigfatradio.com, an online radio station that used proprietary web page streaming technology so that the end user was able to view pages sent from the studio. After the collapse of the venture in the Dot-Com bubble burst, he joined the

Austereo Austereo was an Australian mass media company based in Melbourne. It was founded in 1980 by Paul Thompson, and operated 16 radio stations in metropolitan and regional Australia under the Today Network and Triple M brands. In 2011, the company ...

network in January 2001 and became the Assistant Program Director and Afternoon Presenter of

Triple M Adelaide Triple M Adelaide is a radio station broadcasting in Adelaide, Australia. Its target demographic is the 30–54 age group. Triple M Adelaide is part of Southern Cross Austereo's Triple M network and broadcasts on the 104.7 MHz frequency. Tripl ...

and

SAFM SAFM (official callsign: 5SSA) is a commercial FM radio station owned and operated by Southern Cross Austereo as part of the Hit Network. The station is broadcast to Adelaide, South Australia from studios in Franklin Street. History The stati ...

. In 2005, he narrated the programme ''Rail Around Queensland''. He left Triple M on 27 March 2006 under disputed circumstances. That same year, he started his own media blog. According to ''Adelaide Now'', Tunn was later diagnosed as bipolar. In 2016, living off a $40 daily (Australian dollars) disability pension, the 42 year old Tunn was charged in a Coles shoplifting incident in Firle, a suburb of Adelaide. He was eventually released without conviction, fined $50, and ordered to pay $260 in levies and prosecution costs.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Tunn, Michael 1974 births Living people Triple J announcers Triple M presenters Mass media people from Adelaide Australian television presenters People with bipolar disorder 21st-century Australian people