There was a real sense of energy and forward momentum at last night’s ARN Upfronts.
Even the weird disco ball dancers seemed to find their place in the event and set the mood for something unexpected.
The most unexpected thing was that a radio company was doing Upfronts.
Upfronts have traditionally been television’s way of previewing shows for the next year and pitching the hype to advertisers, but why shouldn’t radio do the same, especially now that podcasts allow radio to showcase many more new shows.
ARN has set a new bar, this will be good for the radio industry. As the old saying goes, a rising tide lifts all boats.
Television companies that have owned radio assets in the past have sometimes made a token effort to include radio in their upfronts. Very token. A few years ago I asked then Nine Entertainment chairman Peter Costello why there was so little mention of Nine Radio in that year’s Upfronts. He laughed, telling me that radio was a tiny part of the business and it wasn’t worth mentioning. Needless to say I didn’t agree with him.
The recent SBS Upfronts integrated radio, with David Hua presenting info about SBS Podcasts joining the OnDemand platform and the Audio division’s visualisation strategy.
The ABC’s imminent Upfronts this year will feature radio and podcast offerings more prominently than in the past. I look forward to that.
I have long argued that radio companies should spruik their content better in a similar way as tv. This year there is more reason than ever for more audio companies to do that. The Star’s main conference venue was filled with clients and ad agencies showing huge interest in what ARN has to offer. ARN has set a new high bar for the other big networks SCA and Nova to match. Who knows, maybe the smaller networks may also catch the bug, albeit in a less expansive manner. Super Radio Network’s new CEO Rhys Holleran certainly has experience in upfronts.
The 21st century audio industry is settling into a rhythm where broadcast radio, on both broadcast and streaming platforms, continues to be the big gorilla when it comes to mass audience and continues to generate strong revenue, but audio has also expanded into niche content with podcasts, which deliver growth and allow advertisers to target specialist interest audiences. Podcasts and digital streaming are delivering revenue growth.
Collectively the radio industry embarked on an excellent initiative with HEARD a few years ago, but the more hype from individual networks there is, the better. It attracts the attention of agencies and lifts the prominence of audio in the minds of the audience.
Of course the big news from ARN’s Upfronts focuses on the stars and the network branding, with announcements about Christian O’Connell going national at Gold breakfast in the five main metro markets, Jonesy and Amanda going national on Gold Drive, Smallzy joining the KIIS network for an afternoon and evening show, and Kyle and Jackie being heard in Perth, but not other markets.
Some of the other initiatives that may slip through the headlines could prove to be the most important for the business and for advertisers. Some of the things that impressed me were:
- DAB+ focus – two new Gold stations on DAB in Brisbane and Adelaide and a new KIIS DAB station in Perth allows the company to expand its network brands to all GfK surveyed capital city markets without risking its existing FM brands in those cities. This has proven to be a successful strategy for Nova Entertainment’s smooth network in recent ratings, so there is a precedent. The expansion to DAB has increased the total size of the radio listening audience, so any new station activity is another ‘raising all boats’ benefit for the industry. I expect that the most interest will happen first in Perth, where Kyle and Jackie will stir the market and make people realise there is more radio available on that DAB button that they may never have pushed before.
- iHeart Women’s Sport audio network – a new slate of podcasts, daily specialist women’s sport reports in the drive timeslot, big sporting names and Women’s cricket are all part of the commercially attractive and strategically important new offering.
- Original locally produced podcasts – notably The Lazy CEO, The Mum’s Group, Australian True Crime, and Access Granted, an interview series hosted by Lowanna Grant. Plus podcast integration with Love Island and a new IRL promotion called Kissed at Sea.
- Branded podcasts – a new branded podcast production strategy with ‘Ruby’ and a partnership with ARE Media’s female focused titles.
- Addressable ad targeting – Ben Campbell and his tech team have worked hard to integrate deeper levels of ad addressability into the network’s commercial offering. The iHeart app has more users than the tv company apps (main picture above).
- Save our Pub – a great idea that will take the radio network to the heart of local communities. This will be a useful promotion for the network’s regional stations, as well as in cities like Sydney where the nighttime pub scene is still recovering from covid and government lockout laws.
- An upgraded app – with ‘favourite station’ buttons at the top, just like a radio set. Corey Layton foreshadowed this in one of our earlier reports saying: 70% of surveyed users compared the app to using a car radio. “They said they want iHeart to feel familiar, just like a car radio, so we have created modifications that mimic the in-car dash experience.”
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More concert events – leveraging the iHeart Live brand, ARN has signalled its intention to bring some big artists to Australia.
ARN has had a rocky ride lately with a falling share price and a round of redundancies that understandably turned some former employees into vocal critics, but the upfronts signal a new start and inject new enthusiasm into the network.
The hundreds of people who attended the ARN Upfront event were enthusiastic about the company’s activities for 2026. The popcorn and choctops also helped 🙂
We saw a huge and unexpected spike in our traffic as we published the various announcements during the afternoon yesterday, so much so that Radio Today crashed for a few minutes and Radioinfo got very slow. Our Radioinfo and RadioToday social media pages also recorded a huge uptick as I posted pics and comments from inside the hall as they happened.
Over the past 24 hours the stories from earlier in the week about stars leaving ARN stations, then the reports from yesterday’s upfronts eclipsed the traffic of anything else in the past month, except ratings day, and brought a lot of additional international traffic.
This level of interest is good for the whole Australian Audio industry. Let’s have more of it.
In a heart felt post-script to this story, I want to acknowledge the two women who began the Upfronts with a new and radio-relevant welcome to country. Mundanara Bayles from Blakstar and her sister welcomed attendees to the event. In their welcome they mentioned that they are from a media family. They are the daughters of the indigenous media leader Tiga Bayles, who passed away in 2016.
Tiga established Radio Redfern, an Indigenous radio program on Radio Skid Row and was also heard on 2SER FM. In 1982, he was involved with the Aboriginal movement protests around the 1982 Commonwealth Games and was a key organiser of the Aboriginal Bicentennial protests in Sydney in 1988. Tiga was a tireless fighter for Indigenous media and a friend of mine, it was great to see his daughters on stage. Vale Tiga.
Comment from Steve Ahern.
Steve is publisher of this trade journal.
Related reports:
Pictures: S Ahern