SCA’s Craig Bruce reckons it will. Nova Entertainment’s Paul Jackson says he hasn’t heard anything about it and ARN’s Duncan Campbell will neither confirm nor deny – but admits that the idea is under serious consideration.
What Campbell will say is that there’s little chance of networking the Kyle and Jackie O Breakfast Show. “You move into networking breakfast shows with caution, particularly in this market (Australia) where the markets are quite different and distance is a big factor,” says Campbell.
He should know given his experience with Richard Stubbs when he worked at Triple M last century and tried to network his Breakfast show from Melbourne to Sydney. “Melbourne listeners really didn’t notice and it had no positive impact in Sydney,” says Campbell.
Check out this Triple M competition ad from 1995 featuring Stubbs and a very young Eddie McGuire to his left…
On the FM band, in the main battlegrounds of Melbourne and Sydney, Survey 6 revealed little change in the trends that showed up in the earlier surveys of 2014.
In Sydney, ARN’s having fun watching their own internal battle to see which of their stations, KIIS or WSFM, will be number one and which will be number two. Great problem to have.
Meanwhile at Nova, Sydney remains the one market where “the number one metropolitan network” is struggling to reach a 7.0 share and hold it.
But that’s better than 2Day which is down to a 3.6 share overall with Breakfast on 3.3.
“That result is disappointing for everyone on the show,” admits SCA’s Craig Bruce. “We think the show is now better than it’s rating and we have a strategy in place at 2Day FM breakfast which we developed at the start of the year and we are continuing to follow that strategy.”
But Duncan Campbell knows that SCA is not going to put up with those results for long: “I think the great challenge for us is to see what happens next year and particularly with SCA and their response to a relatively poor year. They will no doubt be crafting that response at the moment so we’ve got to be ready for that and that is where our focus is.”
The tables are turned, however, in Melbourne where it’s 2Day’s sister, Fox that leads a very bunched FM field from Gold, Nova 100 and Triple M – all within a one percent share of each other.
“I see it as shuffling for top position with those few stations ,” says Nova Entertainment’s Paul Jackson. “Nobody has definitely emerged over anyone else. – you look at a 7.8 , 7.6, 7.3 and a 7.1 – those four stations are extraordinarily close. So, actually, its all to play for.”
Conspicuous by its absence from that bunch and trailing the commercial FM field is Mix101.1 on a 5.8 share. Although it has always more successful than its Mix counterpart in Sydney, it has never been able to gain the kind of traction needed to compete with the top four.
With their success in Sydney and number one stations in Brisbane and Adelaide, ARN’s disappointment in their most under-performing asset is palpable. It seems inevitable that a brand and format change is in the wind. It could be that the it will be the KIIS of life for Mix.