The commercial radio industry is preparing for the restart of radio ratings next week, with contingency plans in place to manage the placement of diaries in areas affected by lockdowns.
The survey period will start on July 26 and runs through to September 19, with results to be released on September 29.
The CEO of Commercial Radio Australia, Joan Warner, said there would be changes to the placement of diaries in Melbourne due to the lockdown requirements.
“We have been closely monitoring the situation in regards to COVID-19, and there will be modifications to the placement of diaries in the Melbourne licence area to ensure the survey goes ahead as scheduled,” she said.
Research provider GfK has trialled and planned for contactless placement of paper survey diaries in Melbourne. In addition, the proportion of respondents completing an e-diary in that city will be increased from 30% to 40%.
Ms Warner said all metropolitan commercial radio stations have been running an on-air consumer campaign to raise awareness of the ratings ahead of the start of field work.
“The ad informs listeners of the surveys process and reassures them that if they are contacted to participate, it will be done safely and within strict COVID-19 guidelines,” she said.
The official radio surveys were paused in April due to the pandemic, but a special GfK Radio Pulse e-diary survey was released in June to keep the market informed about listening trends.
The survey found that commercial radio audiences had increased strongly compared to Survey 2, with average weekly metro audiences up 7.1% to nearly 12 million people.
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We're very interested to see the next ratings results because we'd like to know how 3MP is doing as we're loving listening to this and hope it's now the number one radio station in Melbourne.
We're very disappointed with Coles Radio, we think they're playing way too much modern chart music and we hope they're at the bottom of the ratings now. Every time we request them to do things,they never do it and they never change the music they're playing. Coles Radio used to play some good songs on the station but now this has changed and we don't like what they're playing.
If Coles Radio started playing more easy listening songs and playing our song requests,we'd start listening to them again.
It would be very interesting to see the ratings for radio 2UE and its sibling stations 4BH and Magic1278. My views on "hits and memories" formats and it's variations are known.
What I found very interesting for a job posting on this site at https://radioinfo.com.au/jobs/strategy-analyst-nine-radio under the "company description" heading was the inclusion of ".....radio stations 2GB, 3AW, 4BC and 6PR..." BUT an absence of 2UE, 4BH and Magic1278.
I don't want to speculate on the status of 2UE, 4BH and Magic1278 and their ratings are yet to be released. However, is there something strange about these omissions under the company descriptions? That's 50% of the radio stations missing.
Thank you,
Anthony of observable Belfield