In a similar way to that in which the lack of buffalo weighed heavily on the minds of the half-starved Sioux in the movie Dances With Wolves, the lack of rating points is never far from the thoughts of presenters at Melbourne’s MTR. For an in-depth view of their feelings, Peter Saxon pow-wowed with four of the braves who go daily on the hunt for that elusive herd of listeners that will bring prosperity to their tribe and honour to their tepees.
I’ve been invited to lunch with Breakfast host and PD, Steve Price, Morning presenter, Steve Vizard, Glenn Ridge Weekends, and Drive host, Martin King. Each of them at some time during their careers had been involved in a number one show that commanded a massive audience – Price on Drive at 3AW, Vizard with his own tonight show on Seven, Ridge on Nine’s Sale of the Century and King on ACA.
How hard is it for them to put their best work out there every day on MTR knowing that there is hardly anyone listening? “For me its very hard,” says Price. “On AW you could say, gee its cloudy this morning and the phones would light up within seconds with people saying no its not.”
But King is undaunted, “For me I’m finding that I’m getting so many calls, I have to dump content. I just pretend I have a big audience.”
Vizard says, “The upside is that while you’re taking less callers it forces you to do more content, more editorial, more guests. It makes you try harder.”
Price is under no illusion about the road ahead, “What we’ve done is create a new brand. And whether its food or cars, once people turn forty their habits are very hard to break. And there’s no real reason to turn off 3AW. They still do a pretty good job. Their breakfast show’s become a bit clubby. Derryn’s predictable, Dennis is pretty soft and wimpy and Neil whinges. But the audience isn’t worried about those things. So until there’s a reason for them to turn off they’re not going to come over here.
“But we have deep pockets, patience and supportive owners who are not a big company. We’re not dealing with the Fairfax board, we’re dealing with Singo and Russell Tate. They give their absolute support,” says Price.
Indeed that support is manifest in the sparkling new million dollar studio complex that is due to go to air at the end of the month. It features a soundproof shell on a floating floor to isolate it from the rumble of busy Swan Street in Richmond. From the footpath passers-by can peer into the on -air studio separated from the talent by only soundproof and bulletproof glass.
The latest AXIA equipment from the U.S. has been deployed to facilitate state of the art talk presentation.
But new studios have little to do with attracting an audience and the topic of conversation soon returns to the hunt for new listeners.
While ABC 774 has been identified as at least a secondary ‘happy hunting ground’ for capturing an audience, it is clear that for my MTR hosts the most fertile pastures are at 3AW – a station which Price knows better perhaps than even his own having been PD and Drive presenter there for many years before going to 2UE in Sydney.
Price admits, “We’re probably never going to beat 3AW in the ratings. Our ambition is to provide an alternative product that has to be top quality, whether it rates one or 10 or 21. We would be trying just as hard if we’re still rating one’s in two year’s time. Of course it would be disappointing, but I can only control the content. I can’t control what the public wants. I can’t control the sales or anything except the content. And I’m of the belief that if you keep doing really good content, you will slowly gain an audience.”
While Price pays due respect to his adversaries, he is also happy to point out their weaknesses.
On Neil Mitchell: “I think Neil does a very competent radio job, he rates extremely well – and he’s a great friend of mine. But Neil is a bit of a whinger which was always our big problem when I was PD there. You can never get Neil to loosen up. He’s not a man of the world, he’s very much a Melbourne suburban boy who complains about things all the time. We deliberately want to be different to that.”
On Ross Stevenson and Jon Burns: “Ross and John are obviously unassailable in breakfast in terms of their popularity and we know we’re not going to beat them in ratings but we deliberately designed this to be an alternative to that.”
On Derryn Hinch: “Derryn is Derryn. We all admire his great long career. He’s very opinionated. If I had one criticism of Derryn, it would be that he doesn’t check what he puts to air. He puts to air rumours and things that he shouldn’t put to air.”
Price is clearly frustrated about the way other media (presumably radioinfo included) focuses on MTR’s ratings and dismisses the quality of the content. “Ratings are only important for advertisers to work out what numbers are hearing that they’re selling a garage door. Coverage in the media about the product should be about whether the product is any good, not about how many people are listening to it,” says Price.
Vizard adds, “The predominant number of stories written about the ABC and SBS will be about the quality of the shows. But the starting point for anything commercial is ratings. And I think that’s fair enough, it is a money making venture. But it’s a question of degree. There are things on Channel Nine (like Westwing) that may not rate highly but are of high quality.”
Price concludes, “Ratings day is the only depressing day – eight times a year. The rest of the time we have a great time.”
Certainly, lack of ratings has not impinged on MTR’s ability to entice high profile guests onto the station. Says Vizard, Says Vizard, “We had the director of The King’s Speech Tom Hooper, a fantastic guy, came in for 40 minutes on the day he got nominated for a Golden Globe Award. It wasn’t a cursory interview – in and out. He spoke about everything, about the story behind The King’s Speech, about being nominated. We’ve pretty much had access to every guest – from PM’s to Premiers, stars and commentators that we’ve wanted”.
According to Price the listeners who do make the switch tend to stay, “We don’t have a problem with ‘time spent listening’ (TSL). It’s a sampling problem.”
Some or much of that problem can be attributed to the poor signal reaching the main population of Melbourne from a station whose licence was originally granted to service the people of Mornington Peninsula.
And what are the switchers saying about why they like MTR? King says, “They say they love it because its fresh and different.”
Although there’s little survey evidence to back it, all four announcers agree that most new listeners are defecting from 3AW and ABC 774. Says Vizard, “They always say we’ve moved over, but they sometimes feel so disloyal (to the old station), they say I’ve moved over from the other place, as if its from another house. But they’re very circumspect about where it is they’ve come from.”
Price says, “They say that they are happy that there’s a conservative voice on Melbourne radio they haven’t had before. It was no accident that we recruited (Andrew) Bolt, Sam (Newman) and myself. We’re here to fill a void on the conservative right of politics. And I think that you only have to look at Jones and Hadley and Smith in Sydney to know that there’s a big audience in that area to be had. We just have to get them to find us.”
Nonetheless, Price who knows both cities well, believes that Melbourne is a less conservative town than Sydney. A reason for that, he suggest is that the Labor brand which has been in now for 16 years in NSW is much more on the nose than Labor in Victoria. After all, it was largely the Victorian vote that got Julia Gillard re-elected.
Although as a conservative station, the call is to replace Labor with a Liberal government, Price admits that it is better for ratings in general for Labor to be in. After all, people tend to call to complain about a government rather than praise it.
With the first Nielsen survey of 2011 due out this week, Price and his team are no doubt hoping that it does not turn out to be the first of eight depressing days this year.
Below:View of the news room from studio one. Below that: AXIA panel.
