Hot Tomato’s GM Graham Miles tells Peter Saxon what went right.
Radio networks don’t come any smaller than Hot Tomato on the Gold Coast. Even rare single market enterprises like Ron Camplin’s in Bathurst or Glenn Wheatley’s on the Sunshine Coast manage two call signs each. Hot Tomato stands alone!
Not only is it up against the might of SCA’s GOLD 92.5 and Sea FM but is also battling one of the most commercial sounding ABCs in the country, 91.7 FM – not to mention all the Brisbane stations that penetrate the Gold Coast airwaves.
After 12 years since it first went air, Hot Tomato has finally broken through and hit number one on the Gold Coast. Yet, it’s General Manager, Graham Miles, having previously seen his station “awfully close” for a number of surveys, seemed only moderately-whelmed when I spoke to him last week after GfK had released their latest survey results, the first for 2015.
“We’ve been number one on cume now for a couple of books so we’ve technically been the most listened to station on the Gold Coast for a little while. We finally finished it off with a share,” says Mr Miles.
In truth, the result was not so much due to gains by Hot Tomato, which only rose by a modest 0.1 in share, but rather the spectacular fall (- 2.4) by GOLD which he attributes to, “The ABC growing in that top end. It obviously hurt TSL for GOLD which is one of the things thats kept them up there for a long time.”
In the previous survey, Hot Tomato was nipping at GOLD’s heels, just 0.2 behind in second place. One difference was that SCA were streaming their programs on the net while Hot Tomato had turned their’s off. But Mr Miles plays down any correlation. “I don’t think streaming has had a lot to do with it but with Survey 3 last year we didn’t stream and they did. That’s what’s probably kept them number one by that 0.1or 0.2 per cent. We turned streaming back on in January this year. Now that it’s a level playing field we think we’ve got a pretty good product.”
The big difference between Hot Tomato and its rivals is localism. “Mate, we got no option,” says Mr Miles. “We’re a network of one on the Gold Coast so we’ve got to play to our strengths.
“We can only focus on stuff we can do which is all the localism. It’s a local radio station. All the sessions – Brekky, Morning, Afternoon, Drive – they’re all Gold Coast products. We focus on the things that we can.”
Although Mr Miles is pretty laid back about the survey results, he admits that it represents a great reward for staff. “There’s a whole lot of pretty happy people here this morning. Just to say: hey we work at the number one radio station is really exciting. But it’s not the be all and end all.
The numbers are important overall and you must maintain your core strength for your sales. That’s the critical thing. Without good numbers generating revenue you don’t have a business. You can be number one and go broke. But if you’re number one 18-39 or 25-54, or whatever, you’re going to make a good dollar and you can hopefully achieve both,” says Mr Miles.