If they were great talent of the calibre of Jamie Dunn, Ian Skippen and their off air team of Calder, Gibson et al, it would be a coup to lock them in for five years.
It’s not a smart market. Done before, formulaic content and talent works. So long as its packaged well. Which makes me wonder, the headline talent is signed for two years, what of the production staff, the marketing/integration staff; those unsung staffers that are what make or break a show? Have they been signed up too and with improved pay?
Considering the fact that the ratings for 2Day FM have mostly remained unchanged, I’m wondering how much longer until they start to realise that maybe following Fox’s tatic and having “Sydney’s Hit Music Station” with the same playlist would be their best bet?
And will Em, Grant and Ed be around in 2019? I’m expecting Em to leave but it will be interesting to see what they do.
They should just air music under the “Sydney’s Hit Music Station” guise and build from there.
If you look at why stations like Fox and Sea (both GC and CC) are high rating it is because they all have the best playlists.
2Day Fm tried a similar format before they went with their current variety format but was unsuccessful. Problem is they don’t have K&JO, and Sydney has an oversupply of CHR formats.
2Day and Nova to a lesser extent will continue to struggle while K&JO are on KIIS.
2day had a bad survey this one, but had growth in previous surveys. Sounding like the Fox will make them sound like Nova and KIIS. In regards to sounding like Sea Fm. These guys are in a completely different market, with 1 AC and Classic Hits offering.
You can’t compare regional stations to metro markets like Sydney plus Sea FM Gold Coast had just recently had a bad survey and are a long way behind the market leader and I would’ve thought 2Day’s playlist is not the problem and the variety is good as @Ant5476 just said
I think it’s fair to say that while the ratings of 2DayFM have improved on this time last year, they’re still the lowest rating commercial FM station in Sydney with sister station Triple M not that far ahead!
Probably not would be my guess.
My personal preference would be to bring in some presenters who are actually passionate about their music and making good radio rather than fairly obscure comedians and/or washed-up TV stars.
Although whatever they do, unfortunately I suspect that 2DayFM will struggle to establish a successful breakfast program for some time to come due to the presence of considerably more established shows on rival FM stations in the Sydney market.
Regional stations are only surveyed against their regional competitors, so are not a good measure - additionally, Sea GC recently had an average survey against the variety stations, and Sea CC’s latest survey had them pretty much neck and neck with the variety station.
As for The Fox - it has a magic that can’t be replaced in any other metro market across the country. It’s mostly to do with heritage and that it has always been the default ‘cool’ station in Melbourne.
It has little to do with playlist, or talent, or anything else really. More a combination of those things plus heritage plus Melbourne parochialism.
Fox have certainly had disappointing surveys in the past for sure, but I can’t think of a time where they haven’t been close to #1, if not #1 in decades…
The same story can’t be told for 2DAY or really any other station around the country.
I think the talent is definitely what Fox prides itself on and is why they get the ratings with the playlist being just an added bonus
Do you actually live in Melbourne? If not you cannot call Melbourne a ‘parochialism’ city with small minded people, only a small minded person would call Melbourne small minded
We are the least small minded out of all the cities in Australia, I mean you look at Sydney with Kyle and Jackie O…
Fox is just the default station. It’s the station that everyone will have programmed in by default, and will return to by default.
It’s like a footy team. You barrack for them no matter what. You may not even be all that interested, or your team may be doing terribly. But you support them to the end of the earth for no particular reason…
I don’t think Fox has the best playlist, the best breakfast team, the best workday announcers, the best drive team…
That’s not to say they’re bad, but they’re not necessarily the best.
But they’ll continue to rate because they’re The Fox.
It’s probably best to read that part of the post as being amc_556’s personal opinion rather than being one that’s meant to reflect that of the general population.
And #1 in ratings also does not mean most profitable, which to me is the objective of a commercial radio station. Can’t imagine that the owners would release the data, but I would expect that Fox would be the most profitable station in Melbourne (maybe Smooth wins??), as a music format should be cheaper than 3AW’s talk format - and therefore in my opinion, Fox is the one to own
I view it more in terms of the adage “a champion team beats a team of champions” - in other words, Fox wins because of its combination of personalities, promotions, playlists (is that the 3ps of radio??) and local presence (almost a 4th p). I think that if any of these were particularly off-putting then I don’t think Fox would be the “default” station - however provided it is thereabouts across the board it can retain the mantle of #1 music station.
Personally, I think Nova100 has the best breakfast personalities, however the rest of the station (eg playlists, local presence) lets them down. KIIS definitely fails on the personalities, playlists and presence. Both stations have not knocked Fox off its perch (or can only bird named stations sit on perches?).
In other words, it’s not one thing, its everything that SCA has done right to a reasonable extent in Melbourne (but screwed up in other places …).
