I expect 2CH to continue to lose money. It’s been a dud investment for Oceania Capital. Selling it to Capital/Grant who could network it with 2CA and 6IX might make it profitable, I’m guessing.
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Singleton certainly sold them a “lemon” and he knew it, thus the sweetheart deals when it came to rent, news, technical support etc. One certainly wonders if they are asked to leave the premises. I suppose as a last resort they could just pipe content down from the Sunshine Coast.
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I reckon this move by 9Radio will push 2CH to an older music format. Maybe back to 50’s & 60’s?
Either way, it’s great to have TWO Sydney stations playing music from the 70’s now that WSFM has neglected that decade.
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Similarly I think 4BH will skew younger than 4KQ in Brisbane. This was the case before the Magic/Sport disaster.
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Probably.
In the long run, it’ll be interesting to see if 2CH can retain the services of Tim Webster or if we’ll eventually hear him (and possibly other former 2UE presenters who’ve been displaced in recent years) on 2UE once more.
While I agree, at the same time it seems unlikely that the relaunched 2UE will be a major threat to the ratings of WSFM or Smooth 95.3. Perhaps 2UE will get some of the older WS/Smooth listeners back to 954AM, but I’d probably expect the FM music stations to retain most listeners under 50.
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The 50s and early 60s music that 2CA plays on Saturday night and at some other times during the week is major turn off me. It is terrible music. There are only a handful of songs worth playing on the radio, I think. The rest of the time 2CA has a good playlist.
If 2CH was to play more 50s music it would encourage me not to listen to the station at all when I am in Sydney.
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They might as well sell the station and cut their losses while they can.
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Yeah, it wouldn’t overly surprise me if 2CH is sold again sometime in the next few years.
But at the same time I certainly don’t have a burning desire to see (or more to the point, hear) 2CH turned into SEN Sydney, a full-on Christian station or something else equally niche.
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I know we live in a different era but it might be good to have some music competition on the am band. Like 2ws and 2uw in the 80s and early 90s. Commercial FM in the main don’t play much 70s music.
It will also give DXers something worthwhile/interesting to try for, especially since stations like 2XL have vacated the band. One of my DX goals is to receive a Sydney AM commercial station from the west coast of the US. Tough but possible.
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Why is 2CH still Relies on Christianity?
Hoping the Lord’s light will shine down on their ratings?
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To exclaim “Praise the Lord!” next time Johnny Farnham does another tour? (Please no. Anything but.)
Because they haven’t managed it properly. There’s been a few very detailed contributions here on the simple changes to make it a success, you’d think they’d understand how easy to implement too, Cherie Romano no less yet they manage to make decisions that continue to dumbfound.
@Rossco, it didn’t need to be a lemon if us armchair experts can identify and propose viable alternative decisions.
I’m sure Glenn Wheatley can help make it happen like the old days.
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Stating the obvious here, but they’ve been spending more than they need to, and writing less revenue than they need to, (unless something has changed dramatically since OCP delisted from the ASX). They’re obviously doggedly determined to stick with the way they’ve been running 2CH to this point, but 4 point audience shares and multi-million dollar losses shouldn’t cut it. 2UE’s re-entry into the music radio market will only make it harder. Methinks it’s time to think outside the square before the opportunity disappears.
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Maybe 2CH could do a swap and go down the path that 2UE should have done. Ie to introduce some light talk/talkback to 1170AM.
Midway through last year 2CH registered Classical Music and Stardust Radio as business names. Are they thinking of launching these as digital stations, I wonder?
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I hope so. SCA’s Stardust Radio was brilliant and would be right up the alley of CH listeners.
And well done 2CH on not simply branding them as 2CH Classics and 2CH Crooners.
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I can’t really comment on how 2CH are doing financially, but as an outsider it seems that even Hope Media has recently been doing a better job of operating stations and positioning themselves in the Sydney radio market. Surely it doesn’t take a marketing guru on millions or even several hundred thousand to tell 2CH they should be asking “Does your favourite FM station no longer play your favourite Classic Hits?” in an ad campaign targeting potential listeners?!
It’s also nothing short of an absolute joke how Hope 103.2 have been doing more external advertising (saw an ad for them on the back of a bus in December - has 2CH done anything like this over the last 25 years or so?) and even launching their own news service. These are the type of things we should be seeing/hearing from 2CH!
Agreed. I personally think it’s only a matter of time before Nine starts running an aggressive external advertising campaign (even just advertising in the commonly-owned SMH, on Channel Nine and possibly even 2GB would have an extraordinary impact) for 2UE’s music format which will probably end up being the type of thing 2CH should’ve been doing 12 months ago.
Certainly if the relaunched 2UE starts to outrate or seriously threaten 2CH (I’m willing to predict this might happen by Survey #4 myself), we’ll be speculating about the possibility of 1170AM being sold to a narrowcaster or even closing down entirely by the end of this year.
With some of the cutbacks that 2CH have made recently (which from an on-air perspective, mainly affected breakfast) I’d like to think that any plans to have additional DAB+ stations have been put on the backburner for now!
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That just shows that community licenses shouldn’t go to quasi commercial Christian stations like Hope and Light FM. Too many paid announcers and mainstream music. If I were a commercial station I’d be making noise about that stuff.
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