The situation for Ben Fordham on 2GB drive continues to cause concern. He used to dominate, but now is in 5th position. His show is nowhere near as good as it used to be. He is testy with callers and seems disinterested in the whole thing. Seems to just be there for the money.
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Smooth 95.3 becomes the #1 FM station in Sydney with 9.1%? Admittedly, I didn’t see that one coming! It’ll be very interesting to see if they manage to get overall ratings of double digits figures in coming surveys (this survey’s timeslot high for Smooth 95.3 was 10.0% in the afternoon), that’s for sure.
2DayFM getting a slight decrease would have to be concerning, but the increase for Rove & Sam will probably be enough to secure that show at least a few more months and at least the station is still outrating 2UE (only just though!) and 2CH!
2UE sees some improvement except Drive. May as well let The Duck and Bowen do 5 days a week. At least it’s something different and unique.
To me, he doesn’t quite fit in compared to Jones, Hadley, Smith and Price. I don’t think he has ever dominated the Drive ratings.
From Nova Brisbane:
NOVA 106.9 IS BRISBANE’S NUMBER ONE STATION 10+ – 13.7% SHARE
• # 1 Breakfast Show with Ash, Kip & Luttsy 5:30 – 9am (13.5% share)
• # 1 Workday with Katie Mattin & Tim Wong-See 9 – 4pm (13.5% share)
• # 1 Drive Show with Kate, Tim & Marty and Fitzy & Wippa 4 – 7pm (16.5% share)
• # 1 Nights Show with Smallzy’s Surgery & Jase 7 – 12mn (17% share)
• # 1 cume in Brisbane with 541,000 listeners
A big survey for both of NOVA Entertainment’s Sydney outlets: Smooth’s 9.1 is easily the largest share in that frequency’s history and Nova’s 8.1 good for its best share since S8/2009.
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The Smooth playlist has become way too predictable I think, so I am surprised the ratings have gone up. I still listen to Smooth 95.3 in the car, but at home I’ve found Easy to be a better than good imitation - the playlist is wider and I’m yet to hear an Abba song!!
The Mix listeners who now hate KIIS have migrated to smooth.
Yep, its breakfast show is a disaster. Hopefully it’ll be goodbye Meshel and Matt Tilley asap. Matt can drift off to yet another station’s breakfast show which will undoubtedly underperform.
Time for some fresh talent across the board!
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[quote=“TheViewer, post:14, topic:1497”]
Yep, its breakfast show is a disaster. Hopefully it’ll be goodbye Meshel and Matt Tilley asap. Matt can drift off to yet another station’s breakfast show which will undoubtedly underperform. Time for some fresh talent across the board![/quote]
They should make Kyle and Jackie O move down there. 
Everytime Meshel is on The Project I rarely watch. I can’t imagine listening to her everyday on the radio.
It seems a strange survey.
Ratings were down across Melbourne & Sydney, despite the election.
In terms of the election coverage, really only 774 ABC Melbourne enjoyed a big lift.
3AW (after three astonishing surveys) was always going to drop, and it did.
Still way in front at #1.
Fox FM, especially Hamish & Andy riding high…
Who in their right mind would tune in specifically to hear election chat?
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Sydney’s 40 - 54 year olds are an interesting demographic. The top three stations in this demo are:
- Smooth (9.8%): soft hits and inoffensive announcers
- Triple M (9.8%): sport, rock and blokey announcers
- KIIS (9.4%): Pumping out the Top 40 with hyped announcers
A new station with bogan announcers playing Celine Dion and One Direction with the AFL ad NRL coverage would own the 40 something market.
Something for 2DayFM to think about.
Also, the “Other Stations” (ie. non-listed stations) got 17.8% of Sydney’s 40-54 year olds, meaning a fair chunk of them would be listening to the fringe stations from nearby regional markets (eg. Star 104.5) or the DAB-only stations (eg. OldSkool Radio, Zoo Super Digi, Fun Super Digi, Classic Rock, The 80s, The 90s). In Brisbane, the “Other Stations” on among the 40-54s attract an astounding 25.9% of its listeners.
It’s also interesting to see Smooth attracting double-digit figures on among Sydney’s 25-39s, rating not very far behind 2MMM & JJJ.
I think historically election periods can be a plus for ABC and talk stations. Probably more via the baby boomers than anyone else.
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I think it’s safe to say that WSfm’s music modernisation strategy has been a resounding flop. They’ve pretty much handed the Sydney oldies market to smoothfm.
Not sure what Nova have done to deserve a 1% increase in the city. Probably an anomaly that will be reversed in the next survey.
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Indeed, even though it was successful during most of 2014, when they were #1 FM for 6 consecutive surveys after they’ve adopted the “Pure Gold” branding. It’s the first time since Survey 8, 2013 (the last survey under Nielsen) that Smooth outrates WS in the 40-54s, because even when Smooth was #1 FM for 2 consecutive surveys last year, WS was still outrating Smooth in the 40-54s.
It’s worth noting that in Sydney, Smooth is the #1 FM station from 9am-4pm weekdays & is the #1 overall station on weekends, with WS only 0.8% ahead of Magic 2CH during the latter! 
Down in Melbourne, Gold 104.3 (WS’s sister station) is the #1 FM station from 9am-4pm weekdays, whilst over in Brisbane, 4KQ is the #3 overall station behind 97.3FM & Nova on weekends.
So how can WS stop the rot? Embrace the cheese! It may not be a popular sentiment with the fans of obscure 80s album tracks on here, but Joe Public secretly loves their handbag hits. WS needs to go all power pop from the 70s to early 00s. Sell the upbeat point of difference from Smooth and force the listeners to sing along out loud behind the wheel of their people carriers.
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I agree with DigiFizz. WSFM has had the same playlist for too many years. It’s “Pure Repeat” compared with smooth’s ability to surprise listeners with music not heard on the other commercial and non-commercial FM stations.
I’m not surprised by that, that 'other stations’is 25% in Brisbane .That would be River 94.9, The Breeze,Rebel and maybe 99.7 from Redcliffe .