Survey 8 produced both good and bad for everyone, especially for the major commercial FM troika.
For ARN, KIIS FM’s Kyle and Jackie O bounced back, as they always seem to do, but Jonesy and Amanda took a tumble on WSFM.
The Nova network remains number one under 40 and can boast the number one Drive show with Kate, Tim and Marty against more fancied opposition in Hamish & Andy (hit) and Hughesy & Kate (KIIS). They also have the number one national evening show, Smallzy’s Surgery.
But as Nova Entertainment’s content chief, Paul Jackson proclaims, “Brisbane, Adelaide and Perth – outstanding! Melbourne… to be discussed and Sydney… to be discussed.” Yet, a bigger disappointment is the tumble taken by smoothfm, down by 0.6 in Sydney and by 1.0 in Melbourne – the first serious hit the brand has taken since launch in 2012.
SCA had modest hopes for 2Day FM and its newly installed breakfast show, Rove & Sam in Sydney while Triple M and its Grill Team held their ground. The standout, however, was FOX in Melbourne which continued to kick away from the pack to be a clear number one on the FM band. But that success has come at cost as Chief Creative Officer, Guy Dobson explains, “FOX is doing extremely well, #1 in Breakfast (FM) with Fifi and Dave which is great… obviously at the expense of Eddie (McGuire on Triple M) which is not so great.”
In fact, Triple M which led the the commercial FM pack at the start of the year is now running dead last. Dobbo clearly expected much better.“We’re a little disappointed given what our research was showing for both sides of the network. I think we’re underdone in many respects.”
He wouldn’t be drawn on why there seemed to be a discrepancy between SCA’s own tracking and the GfK result, “All I’m saying is we’re disappointed. Our perceptions were a lot stronger for all our brands than that survey (8) would suggest.
“Perceptions precede reality. Perceptions are our research, reality is the GfK. And you normally get to see exceptions before it happens in surveys. We were seeing signs, and I’m sure our opposition would have seen the signs too, of northward trends,” said Mr Dobson.
At ARN Duncan Campbell wasn’t entirely happy either, especially with WSFM Breakfast’s 1.6 dip in share. He admits, “The result did surprise me. These surveys can throw up some curve balls. The WS result is a one off, well below station average and the last. There’s no real trend there. If there was, I’d be concerned.”
Another station whose breakfast show also lost 1.6 share points was smoothfm 91.5 in Melbourne.
When asked about the overall slump for smooth 91.5, Paul Jackson says, “The breakfast show’s had a slower start to the day is what’s really happened. Most of the shape of it is absolutely there but I think if you lose 1.6 share points in breakfast in Melbourne and broadly flat on about 4.7 in Sydney that’s as difficult as it gets. But we had four or so books at 5.5 and into the sixes. We’ll just take this on the chin and look to do better at the start of the day.
“Is this (the GfK result) something we thought we would get at breakfast time? Um… I’m hesitating to say no… but no. I would think we would have done a bit better than that,” Says Paul Jackson.