Not good news. So the main Triple M bits rate will increase. Is Easy & oldskool staying?
Yes but we can’t lose Modern Rock Digital Too.
Or We Should an Interner Meme say that Triple M does’nt care about New Rock at all if they take off Modern Rock Digital.
Closed down because it was a success.
I wonder what SCA will air in place of Classic Rock on Digital?
During the footy season, it will no doubt accommodate some AFL broadcasts in Sydney and Brisbane.
Can’t believe they actually admitted Classic Rock digital was a victim of its own success!!
So there you have it. C’mon ARN, Nova or even Macquarie Media - launch a decent classic rock digital station on Oct 2nd and swoop in on that audience. SCA are idiots.
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Just incase you forgot, this was proudly brought you by the same network who said “Did your favourite '80s/'90s station go missing?” in the lead-up to the now defunct More Digital (which I believe is now Old Skool?) launching last year when ARN’s '80s and '90s stations never actually went away…
As much as I certainly have my issues with ARN, somehow I still think they’re a better network than SCA! 
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Craig Bruce talks talent at Next Radio
Former SCA Head of Content Craig Bruce delivered a keynote presentation at the Next Radio Conference in London this week, the theme was ‘insights from Australia’s best radio talent’.
Is the reason for SCA’s constant chopping and changing on DAB that they kept accidentally finding music formats people liked?
I wonder if they’ll sell the space to Woolworths Radio, so DAB can continue the march to all the top stations being branded stations.
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IKR, Barry Radio was my favourite station for a while as it introduced me to many new comedians! I think it only survived a year or so!
Woolworths is meant to be rolling out “Woolworths radio powered by Pandora”.
I think it will be the beginning of the end for Digital Radio if this trend continues.
What next? Bunnings Radio?
It cheapens it.
Imagine how these stations would rate if on FM.
Not very high I would think.
Expect a full rearrangement of the SCA digital broadcast spectrum to be announced soon.
There’s changes afoot.
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Modern Rock’s markets are Adelaide and Perth and Classic Rock’s markets are Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane and Perth.
It kinds of makes sense now if SCA’s plan is to merge Modern Rock and Classic Rock into a single DAB station broadcast into all five major cities.
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Yes it’s now called Old Skool http://www.oldskoolradio.com.au previously known as More Digital and prior to that it was LoveLand.
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What a funny decision from an increasingly odd and unstable media company.
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I think we’ll find that this comes down to more than Classic Rock being to successful for it’s own good, but also also a restructure of digital by SCA. Although they have clearly tried to distance the station from the Triple M brand more recently.
I also think that the timing is strategic in that it’s after the football wraps up and Triple M goes into its more music heavy summer lineup. Unfortunately I think that the public perception of the main Triple M station might stop a lot of people switching over.
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I agree. And judging by the rants on facebook it’s going to be tough to turn around the perception of Triple M FM being all talk and sport. Once you trash a brand to a certain point it’s hard or even impossible to come back. I also agree with a previous poster that SCA appears unstable and irrational. They seem to be focused on the extreme short term, and not looking to the medium or long term viability of their stations or the industry in general. Not a good sign for any company.
I’m hoping that Nova Entertainment see the opportunity here to relaunch Classic Rock as soon as possible to capitalize on this blunder. It’s a perfect format for them on digital as it wouldn’t cannibalise Nova or Smooth.
I have taken a look at the analogue and digital ratings for this year and last year and can’t find any evidence to support SCA’s claim that Classic Rock was cannibalising the Triple M audience. (It has be noted that the DAB+ ratings only give cume figures, so only limited analysis can be done - SCA would have access to more figures, as well as their own research).
While there has been a drop in cume for Triple M (particularly in Sydney and Melbourne) between 2015 and 2016, survey on survey, there appears to have been no increase in the ratings of Classic Rock/Triple M Classic Rock. In fact, the cume of Classic Rock was decreasing, while the total audience of DAB+ was increasing. For DAB+ report 3, 2016, Classic Rock ranked #4 nationally, compared to #1 for both reports in 2015 and report 1, 2016.
In terms of benefit from closing Classic Rock down, since SCA have not yet monetised their DAB+ stations, any loss in audience on DAB+ makes essentially no difference since those listeners were never making SCA any money. (Although higher rating on DAB+ would make monetising those stations easier, and keeps those listeners away from competitors). While a significant number of the audience may not move over to Triple M, no doubt some will. Even if they manage to attract a small percentage of the audience to Triple M (say 10% for example), that’s more listeners to their premium, and who cares about the other 90%, since they were invisible before anyway.
That said, I think this strategy will have limited effect - Classic Rock had a cume of a little under 10% of that of Triple M in each of Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane (Adelaide didn’t have Classic Rock Digital and Perth doesn’t have Triple M on FM to compare against). So if 10% of that audience moved over to Triple M, that only gives a 1% increase in cume, which in basically insignificant - it’s within the range of statistical variation, so will translate to a zero increase in revenue.
I think SCA would have been better off to have run Triple M Classic Rock as a secondary type service, focusing on the music with less talk, but with advertising and promos of what the main station was doing (eg. breakfast show, any competitions, sport lineups etc) to try to entice people over to the main station for content they were actually interested in. Sales packages could have been offered to clients to also put their ad on Classic Rock for a small additional fee. Even if they were only able to get a couple of minutes of ads per hour, this could have added up to a nice amount of additional revenue. However, this would have required Classic Rock to be localised (all the SCA digital stations run a national stream played out of Melbourne) - but SCA are the experts in networking content, so would have been able to do this with relative ease.
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