Not only was Gold 104.3 the No.1 FM station in Melbourne this survey, it also had the No.1 FM breakfast show! Why would Lehmo considering leaving with results like this? It was Gold’s best result in a while, posting gains in every weekday timeslot.
Fox, KIIS and Smooth breakfast all fell from last survey.
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Looking at the 40-54 ratings, Gold scored a massive 17.9% share, which is probably the highest share for any station in that demographic in many years. It is 7% clear ahead of 2nd-placed 3AW and 8.2% ahead of 2nd-highest rating FM station, 3MMM.
Still in the 40-54s, but over in Perth, the gap between Mix 94.5 & 96fm has narrowed from 4.2% last survey to 1.8% this survey, after 96fm went up 4.6% to 19.1%, whilst at the same time, Mix went up 2.2% to 20.9%.
Interesting to see WSFM and Smooth 95.3 very close to each other in the ratings. As the population of Sydney continues to mature, I for one won’t be overly surprised if these two are regularly at the top of the FM ratings in surveys to come.
Those ratings for 2DayFM and Talking Lifestyle 954…oh how the mighty have fallen!
From Nova 106.9
NOVA 106.9 IS BRISBANE’S NUMBER ONE RADIO STATION – 13.9% share
• Number 1 Breakfast Show with Ash, Kip & Luttsy with Susie O’Neill 6am - 9am (14.7% share)
• Number 1 Mornings with Katie Mattin 9am – 12pm (12.7% share)
• Number 1 Afternoons with Tim Wong-See 12pm – 4pm (14.2% share)
• Number 1 Workday with Katie Mattin & Tim Wong-See 9am – 4pm (13.6% share)
• Number 1 Drive Show with Kate, Tim & Marty 4pm – 6pm (17.6% share)
• Number 1 Nights Show with Smallzy’s Surgery 7pm – 10pm (14.8% share)
• Most listened to radio station - 579,000 cume
Ive said it before and I’ll say it again: they dumped Rove & Sam and Dan & Maz for poor ratings, and both shows rated better than Em & Harley. And let’s face it, Ed Kaverlee is hardly a ratings boon, although maybe his recent TV profile will help.
There are plenty of reasons why an announcer would want to leave a network, or the industry in general. Ratings is barely a factor. Good ratings gives management a major incentive to try and keep an announcer, whilst bad ratings is a disincentive to keep an announcer or team. But the personal decision to move generally has little to do with ratings. You could be on the highest rated station in the country and still work in a toxic environment. Or want to pursue TV interests. Or need a break from early starts. Or have a sick relative. Or get a better offer…
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Talking lifestyle has to go surely? In Brisbane and Melbourne at least.
Something seems a bit askew to me as well when the top rating FMs in Sydney and Melbourne pull around the same % as the top ones in Brisbane, when there are theoretically 2 fewer stations.
Is it the River 949 effect which is hidden? Is DAB starting to have an impact? Or is it the poor quality of 4MMM and 97.3? Based on how Gold and WS and Smooth do in Sydney and Melbourne, surely MMM and 97.3 should be able to dominate Brisbane? If 97.3 ‘smoothified’ a little and 4MMM dropped the talk and bogan and ‘goldified’ they would surely top the ratings.
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Well done to Gold & Jo and Lehmo 
Some relief for ARN, after another disappointing year in Melbourne. Not as bad as SCA in Sydney.
There’s actually not much difference. While the top stations might have similar numbers, the Brisbane stations are pulling higher shares overall. Nova is the highest FM in Brisbane on 13.9. That crown goes to Gold in Melbourne on 11.1 (which is unusually high) and KIIS in Sydney on 9.5.
The totals of the surveyed stations is also similar:
Sydney: 86.2
Melbourne: 88.5
Brisbane: 83.1
Brisbane’s figures doesn’t include TAB, where Sky is included in Sydney (it goes 1.1, so I’d guess TAB would be similar). Given there’s also overlap from the Gold Coast and Sunshine Coast stations, I’d question how strong the River effect would be.
In the Ipswich survey River had a cumulative audience of 75,000 in its licence area. In this survey 4BC’s was 126,000 for 5.6%. Not sure if the methodology is the same but you could probably add a few more listeners to River given the signal strength in south and west Brisbane.
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The methodology is very different. River might have a few listeners in Brisbane, but I’d say in the overall make-up of Brisbane, with offerings from Gold Coast, Sunny Coast and Ipswich in addition to the Brisbane commercials, I’d suggest the amount of River listeners in Brisbane is far fewer than you might hope.
ARN would be silly not to renew Jo & Lehmo as it has been reported.
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Good to see 2ch heading in the right direction. The sound on dab is impeccable. Hope it keeps going up after the slump when magic took over.
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The overspill from the Gold Coast is non-existent for the mainstream stations (Gold, Sea, Hot Tomato). A bit more for Sunshine Coast stations on the northern fringe, but River is definitely more a “Brisbane” station than anything from the coasts. I work on the south side of Brisbane and there are lots of River listeners. There’s no comparison in terms of signal strength into Brisbane of 94.9 compared to stations from either coast. Another point is that more people live on the south side of Brisbane than the north side.
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2CH sound amazing on DAB, great stereo sound stage, they have it sounding very nice, when they are running 128kbps I should hope they had it sounding amazing 
I can hear River very well on my Sony AM/FM Receiver in the house here quite well, can’t hear 92.5 Gold FM or 92.7 Mix FM anywhere near as good, in the car it is slightly better but does not hold a candle to the signal of River.
For reference I live in Cannon Hill area.
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Look! We’re giving away money! We’re advertising! (where??) We’re getting engagement!
Listeners?? …crickets…
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Although I don’t remember seeing them recently, perhaps those TV ads (IIRC, for a Sydney City Lexus competition) are helping the ratings of 2CH.
The “Magic 2CH” branding wasn’t great but personally, I think 2CH really started to lose it when the “Happy Days” relaunch (with that awful logo and cheesy jingle) happened a few years back.
Good to see the station improving in the ratings under the “Easy Classics” branding/format though.
2CH has been at 128kbps on DAB+ for a few years now, although personally I think that station has always sounded pretty darn good on Digital Radio (at least for as long as I’ve had it anyway) even back in the days they were at 96kbps!
While there’s no official overlap with the Gold Coast, some people near the border of the areas will be listening Gold Coast stations. As you say more so for the Sunshine Coast, in which the Brisbane licence areas goes far enough north into the Nambour licence area that Brisbane diaries will be distributed to some people who commute to the Sunshine Coast and therefore listen to those stations. Same thing would happen with Ipswich though, so The River would probably be the highest rating of the “close-to-Brisbane” stations.
The point I was trying to make was there was a recent rating survey for Ipswich that gave River’s cumulative audience. Given that there is a 72% overlap in licence area with Brisbane RA1, it is a good place to start to try to estimate what share the station would get if it was included in the Brisbane survey.
Interesting idea. Before people get confused, this overlap means that 72% of the Ipswich licence area is also located in the Brisbane licence area - or in other words, accounts for 167,000 people who live in both.
River’s cume of 73,300 is comporable to 4RN’s 78,000 - which gave it a 3.1% share today.
However, it’s not accurate to compare cumes and averages.
4BC and 4RN have talk formats, which typically have lower cumes, whereas River’s music format typically has a higher cume.
To compare, 97.3 has a share of 11.1 - approximately double 4BC’s 5.6. However 97.3 has a cume of 521,000, which is more than 4 times 4BC’s cume of 126,000.
Let’s assume that with some spill further into Brisbane, River’s cume went up to 104,200 (1/5 of 97.3’s cume to make the maths easier) - compared to 97.3, this would only indicate a share of 2.2%.
River’s cume in Brisbane could well be lower when you consider that 28% of that 73,300 (which is about 20,000) were located outside of the Brisbane overlap area.
That said, it’s probably fair to estimate that River get about 2-3% of the Brisbane audience.
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