Can this pair sans hair make a dent in the Sydney Breakfast market?
A few weeks ago, we brought you Part One of our lively little chat with John Stanley and Garry Linnell, 2UE’s latest assault on Sydney’s breakfast talk arena. Whether these latest warriors of the airwaves can even land a punch on 2GB’s Alan Jones who occupies the lion’s share of the arena is yet to be seen.
Early signs from GfK Surveys 1 and 2 were encouraging and despite a dip in Survey 3, John and Garry remain encouraged.
radioinfo: Do you find it frustrating that people tend to think that everyone listens to the number one station and no one listens to the station that’s number ten?
John: In radio sometimes you tend to think, ratings are down, therefore no one’s listening. But our average audience at any one time is the number of people watching a major football game at the (Sydney) football stadium. Our cume is just about half the number of people watching the game on TV. That’s a very big audience on a tiny percentage.
But there are lots of people listening and you disrespect your audience by not acknowledging that they are there and they are loyal to you. In the end it doesn’t change what you do. You go in and you do a radio show.
Garry: We’re level pegging with 2Day breakfast – that’s what I tell the kids.
John: We’re actually getting a better reaction on the phones and through emails than I can remember in the last 10 years.
Garry: I’ve noticed a big change. I used to pop in last year and there’s a very different atmosphere this year. It’s much more upbeat this year. There’s a lot more camaraderie… everyone seems interested in
everyone else’s programs. There’s a lot if interplay.
John: The thing about 2UE is that we could rate 10-12% Monday to Friday because a lot of 2GB listeners and ABC are switching across to us on weekends. Weekend breakfast rates around 10 per cent and it’s been as high as 12’s at one point. Same with George and Paul who rate number one between 9 am and 2 pm.
But it’s that Monday to Friday routine of people who have for the last 10 years or so been listening to Alan Jones, that we have to win over.
Garry: We think there’s a real opening there. We don’t want to jam views down people’s throats. And we also want to blend things with a bit of humour, because there’s not a lot of humour on the AM dial when you go around it in the mornings.
There’s a lot of really serious brow beating stuff and when you’re getting up at 5.30 in the morning you want to be able to smile a little bit. You don’t want everything to be grim.
John: Personally, I think we are 30-40% of where we want to be. We’ve got several benchmarks that we want to meet. The first one is to get above five so we can take it back to where it was maybe a year and a half or two years ago and then try and get above 6 and then see where we go from there. So its gradually a slow build of an audience.
In the end it just goes back to what I said before… you walk in and you have the privilege of doing a radio show with a big audience that’s listening to you every day so it doesn’t change the enjoyment of doing it or the privilege of doing it.
radioinfo: In what way is your breakfast show different to the one it replaces?
John: In the intervening four years we’ve tried to copy Jones’ breakfast show on 2GB and it didn’t work. The most successful radio show in the country is Ross and John at 3AW and they rate consistently well. The irreverent laid back style they have, which they’ve developed over 20 years… we want to do a newsier version of that.
The thing that’s fantastic about Ross and John’s show is the way the listeners get involved and the way they embrace the show and “get” what they’re about and I think we’ve got a lot of that. We actually like the way the callers are interacting and we’re using the callers to be part of the show.
Garry: They are “getting” the show. There are a couple of callers who ring up and say “this is an outrage and it needs to be fixed!” Of course, this is a piss-take line that I’ve used as kind of a send up of talk radio… whenever we can’t come up with a solution we go, “this is an outrage and it needs to be fixed!”
John: The fact is that a few callers have picked up on that stuff and they are basically ‘buying into’ the show.
Garry: Talking about that sense of ownership listeners have over the station… when that women called me an imbecile about six weeks in – when we went to the ad break John told me, “Well you’ve made it in radio now!”
John: We’re trying not to make it talkback 101 where you say ‘Are there too many Muslims in the country? Call now on 131332.’ Of course you’re going to get calls. We are trying to do subjects that we think our audience are interested in and like to talk about and think about.
Garry: Having said that, the ten past seven segment the other day on Kyle and Jackie O was female orgasms. We’re not going to compete with that. We’ve got a different audience.
radioinfo: Garry you’ve come from a newspaper and television background with little experience in radio. How are you settling in?
Garry: I get off air and I wince every day at some of the cockups I’ve made. Just mangled words or haven’t been coherent enough in what’s up here (pointing at his head). That’s what I find difficult. Because I’m used to dealing with words. I’ve got 30 years plus of sitting there going, ‘No I won’t say it like that, I’ll do it like this’ while I refine it and polish it.
There’s no polishing here. There’s no edit button. When you open your mouth on radio, first draft is final draft.
Read Part One