Now with three breakfast shows competing for the under 40’s market in Sydney, how do they compare in terms of the number of songs they play, the commercial load and the amount of time their presenters have left to talk to their listeners?
 
With the help of our marquee sponsor, AirCheck™ we’ve discovered that not all breakfast shows are created equal. Taking a snapshot of last Friday’s breakfast shows between 7 and 9 am on Nova, KiiS and 2Day we found vast differences in music and commercial loads.
 
Nova 969 played the most songs, six in each hour between 7 – 8 and 7 -9. Next came 2Day FM with four in each hour. But KiiS 1065 is easily the music miser of the group playing just two songs in the first hour of the  AirCheck™ monitored period and four the next.
 
On the other hand, KiiS ran the heaviest commercial schedule with 29 ads in each hour between 7 and 9 am, a total of 58 spots that took up 12 minutes in the first hour and 11 in the next.
 
By comparison Nova ran almost half the number of ads – 18 in the first hour and 16 the next for just 7 mins and 20 secs in hour one and just 5:20 in hour two for a total of 12:40 for the two hours monitored.
 
2Day-FM’s commercial load was a little more than Nova’s with 18 spots in the first hour and 17 in the second taking up a total of 14.5 minutes or just over 7 minutes per hour.

Of the songs, RUDE by MAGIC! made it onto all three station playlists as did FREE by Rudimental feat. Emeli Sande. OF THE NIGHT by Bastille made it onto the KiiS and 2Day lists but not Nova’s on this particular morning and HAPPY by Farrell Williams was shared by Nova and 2Day but not KiiS. All the other songs were exclusive to each station between 7 and 9 am last Friday.

In the end, it was 2Day’s mix of music, ads and promos that left it with the most time allocated to news, weather, traffic and its hosts Merrick, Jules and Sophie with Mel B.

Despite running far more commercials, the paucity of songs allowed KiiS to come in second with an hour and 14 and a half minutes dedicted to Kyle and Jackie O plus news etc.

With more than 40 minutes taken up by music, Nova leaves less than the others for breakfast hosts Fitzy and Wippa to connect with listeners.

Look out for our coverage of Melbourne stations coming soon.