Southern Cross Broadcasting were prompted to shed 60 employees, or about 5% of its workforce, over the past two months because of the weak state of the radio and television advertising markets.

Revealing the retrenchments in today’s AFR, Southern Cross chief executive Tony Bell said staff numbers had been cut at all levels of the company.

Mr. Bell said: “We needed to make efficiency improvements in most areas, given the current environment.”

This environment includes a weak capital city radio ad market which grew just 2.7% in the 11 months to May 31.

In his AFR story Neil Shoebridge says analysts are predicting Southern Cross will report a full-year net profit of between $50 million and $56 million, down from $59.4 million in 2004-05. Its normalized net profit fell 2.8% to $31.1 million in the December 2005 half.

Mr. Bell is reported as saying the company’s radio stations, which include 3AW in Melbourne, 2UE in Sydney and 96FM in Perth, have lifted their ratings, revenue and earnings over the past year.

“We’ve performed better than the market in terms of growth. 3AW in particular continues to grow strongly but all the stations are going very well.”

As reported last week by radioinfo, nine of the 60 staff retrenched were at 2UE which continues to lag well behind its arch-rival Macquarie Network’s 2GB.

Mr. Bell said at the time: “2UE was still structured like it was the number one rating station, which isn’t the case. Its costs were too high for its position in the market. We had invested in 2UE in recent years because of competition from other talk stations and a new rival in DMG’s Vega. Now it’s well-structured for good profitability going forward.”

Mr. Bell would not tell the AFR whether 2UE was profitable during 2005-2006.

The station’s general manager, Ian Sheppard, unexpectedly quit on Friday last week (see separate story) to join the Nine Network as direct sales manager.