The Aussies have won the Ashes, there was at least one fantastic stinking-hot summer beach day, we’ve consumed the last of the Christmas fruit platter, left over ham and Christmas cake, the New Year sales have passed, so now it must be time to end the holidays.

If you are preparing to go back to work, commiserations… oops, er, welcome back!

We can tell from our readership stats that many radio professionals worked up to Friday December 22nd and kept reading radioinfo right up to their last day at work. Given the way that Christmas day fell the following Monday, it seemed logical to complete the round of Christmas parties, get all the sales schedules locked in, produce and schedule ads and promos for the holidays, then knock off on that Friday.

The was weeks ago! Can you believe it?

Our readership numbers dipped, as usual, during the Christmas break, as many readers enjoyed their well earned holiday and didn’t think about work.

We can also see from our readership stats that quite a lot of people only had Christmas and New Year weeks off and have already been back to work since last Monday January 8th, when our readership numbers ticked up again. But we expect another big jump in readership from next Monday as well. Many regular presenters will be back on air, and the first survey begins on Jan 22. Here’s the survey schedule for 2018.

To get yourself ready for work, you can look back at last year’s top radio stories here.

And, in case you missed it, here are some of the stories we covered while you had your feet up:

Nova hosted its first Red Room, with Oasis star Liam Gallagher.

WSFM got a new Content Director and announced two new day time presenters. Changes at WS FM: New content director, new daytime presenters

A dispute arose within the community broadcasting sector about AMRAP.
‘We have formed The Republic of AMRAP as a peaceful but public intervention’
Any bean counter can see ‘a fair future’ for AMRAP

All through the break, we have also been scanning the net to see what stories are breaking around the world. You can catch up on reports such as The UK considering the Triple M cricket commentary model, the latest on Garrison Keillor, the Dangers of Social Media for Radio, the BBC gender pay gap and much more in our Hot off the Net section.

During the holidays, the Airplay team were still keeping an eye on the spins charts across the country, and they are ready for you to view in the usual chart section here.

Were you travelling around Australia during the holidays? Did you need to know about the local stations? There’s always our interactive station map available to check such things.