Good News, Bad News: A Tale of Two Cities

The ups and downs of directing content for a commercial FM network

With seven to ten stations in a national network it’s rare, if not impossible, to have nothing but good results from every station in every market. But in Tuesday’s Nielsen Survey 6, DMG was handed about as good a set of numbers as a network could hope for with all their stations either increasing share or at least maintaining their rank in their respective markets. More details here and here.

SCA and ARN were not quite so lucky.

While ARN’s GOLD in Melbourne had its best survey in almost a decade, its sister station, WS-FM, in Sydney had one of the worst.

For SCA, it was good news in Sydney with 2Day and their breakfast team Kyle and Jackie O once again proving their resilience as they notched up 50 survey wins in a row on the FM band. But in Melbourne, its sister, FOX, gave up its outright FM leadership for the first time since 2006, forced to share first place with GOLD.

Here’s how ARN’s Duncan Campbell and SCA’a Craig Bruce responded to the good news and the bad in Sydney and Melbourne.

You can read DMG’s Paul Jackson’s response here. Note: Subscribers only.

Sydney

Good News

Craig Bruce: It’s a very good result for us in Sydney today with Kyle and Jack leading the way. That market has been very competitive for some time now. Obviously there are other FM stations that have had success today, but for us the 2Day result is very positive. So, we’re really happy with both brands in Sydney. And the Kyle and Jack 50 in a row is an amazing effort.

Bad News

Duncan Campbell: The year to date average for WS is 7.5 so today’s result of 6.3 is well below the average. If you take Smooth’s YTD average of 5.7 and 6.8 is well above the average. SO again and there will be some big statements made about that so lets look at this at year end and see where it plays out.
There’s no way we are going to be over reacting to today’s book. The format is very focussed – the strategy is rock solid for WS and we expect to drive that and execute that going forward. . The risk is that stations change tack based on one survey result and that’s what causes issues down the track so for us its steady as she goes and we expect the losses today to be regained by the end of the year.

Melbourne

Good News

Duncan Campbell: GOLD is equal number one FM in Melbourne. That’s the first time that FOX hasn’t been a clear number one FM since 2006. Also GOLD is number one  25-54, which is the first time since 2007.
I talked previously about the strength of the classic formats and GOLD delivered on that today. I think in this survey, if you take a helicopter view, we have seen a drift back to FM to some of the listening that was done last survey.

Bad News

Craig Bruce: There are two things happening with FOX. There’s our issues, which is a breakfast show that is struggling at the moment. And we don’t shy away from that. It should be doing better.
(The other is)The NOVA breakfast show is finishing at the end of the year. And anyone whose worked in radio long enough knows that if you change a breakfast show, particularly one that’s been around for 13 years there is a reset and a series of challenges that they’ll have to go through with that new show.

I’m sure they’ll come up with a great list of people to potentially do the show, but whoever they hire won’t be Dave Hughes and Kate Langbroek. It will take a period of time to find their feet.

So, we’re not completely out of the game, we are having to fight our own issues with the FOX Brekky show and we think we’ve got a couple of things we can do over the next period of time to address the ratings. And then we’ll get a better look at the new year with some new competition and that may help us a little in Melbourne.

Duncan Campbell: That will definitely disturb the market. Any 12 year heritage show that’s been very successful  – and congratulations to them – that will leave the market at the end of the year will leave a hole that will disturb things. But to what degree? I’m not sure. The beneficiaries of that will probably be FOX and MIX to some degree so its incumbent upon us to know that we’ve got our breakfast shows performing best as they can.

Those Damn Surveys

Both Campbell and Bruce expressed a degree of frustration with the vagaries of surveys.

Other than rogue figures Craig Bruce was at a loss to explain why The Grill Team on Triple M Sydney held steady while Morning and Afternoon listening collapsed.

Craig Bruce: The Triple M result was a little disappointing from a workday perspective. You know how the diary system works. We could have been a little unlucky with some book drops. I’m not trying to play down the result but I think we can trade through it. I don’t think there’s anything fundamentally broken on 2MMM.

Let’s see how that pans out over the next couple of surveys. Our sister stations in Brisbane and Melbourne take essentially the same format and we have very strong workday results in those markets.

Duncan Campbell: I think its’ a tale of two cities. I think smooth in Melbourne is where we always expected it to be, that is a 5.0 to 5.5% radio station. But the reality is that the Sydney market is different and I think there is a bigger hole for a soft ac station in Sydney. However, today’s result for smooth (6.8 share) isn’t consistent. And the WS result (6.3) is not consistent.

I think what’s truly interesting with survey results is: I’ve been back in Australia for  three years and I’ve heard some big statements being made after each book. And in a lot of cases, those big statements amount to nothing. So, if you take our Sydney result, yes it’s disappointing, but were not feeling squashed in Sydney at all. I think that people need to apply a bit of common sense and look at it holistically. And when you do that you see a consistent level of performance at ARN and it’s delivering in a real positive sense.

Smooth had a good book, no doubt about that, and congratulations to them. But to make some of the statements I’ve heard today about them being a number one station in Sydney, I think that’s far too premature.