Commercial radio stations are calling on the Federal Government to spend $80 million in an accelerated roll-out of DAB+ technology.

The commercial radio industry’s advanced ad buying platform RadioMATRIX has processed more than 1 billion items of radio inventory since launch in October 2017, according to figures released by CRA.
 
RadioMATRIX allows buyers to easily connect with every commercial radio station on one powerful platform and is now being used by 190 media agencies to manage radio campaigns running across 360 stations.
 

GfK and Commercial Radio Australia have released the Finance & Investments category report, providing media agencies and radio sales teams an overview of some of the additional survey data available to them via Gold Standard software.
 
Key Insights include:
 

The number of listeners to Australian commercial radio is at a record high according to the latest data collected in the CRA’s annual listening summary, prepared by GfK.
 
10.891 million people listened to commercial radio each week across the five metro markets in 2019, up by 1.4% on 2018.
 
Of those 10.891 million people, 10.4% are aged 10-17, 11.6% are aged 18-24, 26.7% are aged 25-39, 22.5% are aged 40-54, 12.6% are aged 55-64 and 16.2% are aged 65+.
 

Advertising revenue for metropolitan commercial radio stations fell by 6.1% over the 2019 calendar year to $760.799 million, compared to the record high of $810.322 million achieved in 2018, according to data compiled by Deloitte and released today Commercial Radio Australia.
 

The winner of Round 4 of the 2020 Siren Awards has been decided, with advertising agency The Royals named overall winner after securing victory in the campaign category for the Athena Home Loans ad series ‘The Call’. They also placed first in the single category for the individual commercial ‘The Call – No Fees.’
 

Commercial Radio Australia has welcomed the Government’s response to the ACCC’s Digital Platforms Inquiry.

The Government’s immediate response includes:

Wil Anderson and Charlie Clausen, who produce the cult hit podcast series TOFOP (Thirty Odd Foot of Podcast), are among three new publishers that will have their shows included in the Australian Podcast Ranker, beginning January 2020.

The commercial radio industry has launched a landmark consumer-focused DAB+ digital radio campaign, which highlights that “radio is the ultimate soundtrack to any situation”.
 
The new multimedia marketing campaign is the largest ever DAB+ campaign commissioned by the commercial radio industry since DAB+ services launched in Australia 10 years ago.
 

AFTRS and CRA announced a new scholarship to support a regional student moving to Sydney to study AFTRS’ Graduate Diploma in Radio which covers all aspects of audio including podcasting.
 
The CRA Podcast Scholarship will provide $7,500 in 2020, to support the student’s living expenses and re-location to Sydney plus a 4-week internship at PodcastOne.