Smooth FM and KIIS? They’re pretty good and a lot better than Vega or Mix ever was.
Even the current 2DayFM is miles better than it was pre-2018 IMO.
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Maybe the exception of this is KIIS 106.5, but it’s the best of a bad bunch.
Sorry already mentioned above.
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I don’t rate Smooth anymore. They were once very listenable and a bit adventurous, now they’re boring and repetitive. I’d actually say they’re not even as good as Mix 106.5 in the mid to late 90s anymore.
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They’ve found their target audience and are rating well, and bringing the advertising dollars in. A big success. The music might have changed and they might be playing more mainstream music with a reduced playlist, but it’s still a good radio station. Vega or Mix barely got above a 5% if ever. Vega failed and Mix struggled to make an impact, especially in Melbourne. Smooth and KIIS on the other hand have been rating much better, especially in Sydney and KIIS Melbourne has cracked the 7% mark for the first time ever?
Yet the content is worse, always worse. So it’s not better to mass network.
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Not necessarily. The success of Smooth proves if you get the content and music right, you can build an audience over time and be successful.
The Pure Gold Network is doing well in Syd, Mel and Per and is mostly networked content, as is Nova.
To this moment in its FM markets. As the format has devolved to the lesser quality well described by @Brianc68, audience will systematically drift & decline over time as satisfaction deteriorates.
Nova is underperforming and would do much better with market specific researched music, local tactics and talent. It shouldn’t be a hard task to better KIIS/Mix or the SCA stations, both have poor CHR/Hot AC offerings.
WS and Gold 104.3 and Cruise all have different logs and benefit from it.
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I agree. I think Smooth’s audience will start to drop off eventually if they continue to dumb down the playlist and sound like 90s Soft Pop.
They are forgetting what made people listen in the first place.
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There’s a whole industry devoted to music research. Even Vega conducted research despite their failure!
The radio operators and programmers know what they’re doing.
Music formats change over time but that’s just a natural consequence of fragmented audiences, ratings and market dynamics.
Smooth does sound very different now than it did a decade ago but Smooth Relax has filled a gap in the market, as Smooth targets younger audiences. Nova also sounds very different from 2 decades ago, but new DAB stations have filled the gap in the market such as MMM 2000s, Dance Hits, NovaNation and Nova Throwbacks.
The same is true in the UK. All the Global and Bauer stations sound much different than they did prior to consolidation/ market dynamics and audience fragmentation.
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Mostly local, you’d find. They also aren’t in Perth.
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I was referring to the networked content of the Christian O’Connell show which is broadcast in Perth and Brisbane on KIIS. I was also referring to the success of Jonesy and Amanda’s Jam Nation show.
Day parts are local but afternoon and evening content is networked.
2 or 3 hours a night hardly counts as “mostly networked content”
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Ok point taken but let’s not get too pedantic.
The point I’m making is networked content done well, can be successful and having local content 24/7 doesn’t necessarily mean success or the station is better.
Even Rebel and the Breeze have the same logs and are essentially networked, so let’s not get too emotionally attached to the idea that ‘local is better’.
If you want 100% local then there’s plenty of community stations to listen to.
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I just don’t think it really applies to how ARN have really operated, there’s very little shared playlists among their metro stations and there’s not that many examples of them just blasting their brand around.
Sure they tacked “KIIS” onto 97.3, but even then they haven’t substantially shifted the music to match KIIS in Sydney, and I think it’s most forgivable on a station that had no brand to begin with.
Most of the regional playlist sharing has been inherited from cost cutting in the Grant era - and for the most part changes in networked content was just swapping stuff sourced from Nova for the ARN stuff.
They aren’t trying to buy SCA because they think SCA is a much better run company with lessons to learn from, as some kind of reverse merger for executive talent acquisition, it’s taking how they operate and applying it to the potential they see in the stations if it was run well.
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Like I said, I’ll be surprised if, after this transaction goes through, ARN eventually don’t move towards 2 national logs - one for the KIIS network and one for the Triple M network.
It might not happen straight away but over time, it will most likely eventuate.
You can see this outcome from the US, UK and NZ radio industries and Australia is moving in that direction of consolidation.
And as I already said, if the content and music is good, it doesn’t really matter.
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It will probably happen but I hope it doesn’t only as the result of executives probably from Auststereo that don’t understand radio. The executives from ARN seem to understand it better. They didn’t decide to market all their regional stations Triple M which is meaningless to people in regional areas.
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The acquisition?
I suspect if the SCA board decides to reject the offer then there might start being some pressure from major shareholders to reconsider
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The below document provides an update on the possible takeover by ARN/ACP.
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The big takeaway is that LiSTNR lost $8.6M in the first half FY24 but is expected to break even by Q4 FY24.