Don’t get too excited about those 2CH Digital ratings.
I wonder how many of those 5% listeners (when they were AM) have moved to other stations?
Now imagine if ALL 1170AM listeners shifted over to 2CH Digital.
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Maybe it will be the next ratings SEN will be in the rating?! I guess it was expected 2CH are number one in the DAB ratings.
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So Nova, can you keep moving away from the Throwbacks and keep adding more Fresh Hits and New Music? Much improved but you still need to do more to catch up to the #1 hit music station.
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With Perth having 2 multiplexes and Brisbane 3, potentially one third fewer stations to choose from.
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Can’t seem to find it but I recall reading that SEN won’t be measured until S1/2021. Even if there’s a low share result I can imagine their cume figures would still be useful in selling to clients.
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First survey in 2021, my prediction for SEN will be somewhere between * and 1%
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A few points of interest from the Sydney ratings results:
*2GB will be happy that their ratings increased, although one wonders how Alan Jones is feeling about how his replacement Ben Fordham received a 1% increase from the previous survey?
*Kyle & Jackie O still the King and Queen (I’d probably use different descriptive words to describe them, but these are inappropriate for public forums!) of Sydney FM breakfast radio ratings. No surprise there.
*Big drop for Smooth 95.3, finishing just 0.2% ahead of KIIS overall. I’m sure they’ll be happy that Bogart & Glenn still outrated WSFM’s no doubt more expensive Jonesy & Amanda at breakfast though.
*Speaking of WSFM, they shed listeners in almost all timeslots (including breakfast). Wonder if we should expect to see/hear big changes on 101.7 in the near future in a bid to remain competitive?
*2DayFM finished the year with a slight increase, including Music For Breakfast with Jamie Angel which of course will be replaced by The Morning Crew with Hughesy, Ed & Erin in the new year!
*2UE did OK to at least jump above 1%, but you can’t help but wonder if they’d be rating even better with external promotion (especially during top rating programs on Nine TV, such as the 6pm news) and some ex-2CH personalities.
Yeah, SEN 1170 will be on the AM/FM list for the first survey of 2021.
It’s certainly good to see a #1 DAB+ station which isn’t also available on AM (SENTrack), FM (The Edge), Digital TV (most of the ABC stations) or the in-store radio of a retail chain (CW Remix, Coles Radio).
Of course it’s also possible that some might be listening to 2CH via the streaming/app, although the same probably can be said about even the AM/FM stations!
LOL, probably.
You also really have to wonder why they bother running SEN Victoria on Sydney DAB+ with that station receiving asterisks across the board. SENTrack didn’t perform much better during its 2nd time in the Sydney DAB+ ratings, if anything those figures are potentially worse when you remember how SENTrack is also available on 1539AM.
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It’s certainly good to see a #1 DAB+ station which isn’t also available on AM (SENTrack), FM (The Edge), Digital TV (most of the ABC stations) or the in-store radio of a retail chain (CW Remix, Coles Radio).
In my view if they want 2CH to continue, they should bring back the bits to 64 bit or more. Remove SEN Victoria, make SEN 1170 & Track as 4A both mono streams. When the cricket is on Sunday night they can flick over SEN 1170 DAB to keep the cricket going.
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97.3 doesn’t need to become smooth in name to bring in a playlist similar/identical to theirs.
“Brisbane’s Feel Good Station. 97.3”
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I noticed this as well as soon as they reduced the throwbacks the ratings improved. I think they need to go much hotter still and be more like Capital fm London music wise to gain back the younger listeners lost. Look at the 10-17 and 18-24 for KIIS they are massive. All because Nova alienated their younger listeners by focusing so much on throwbacks.
The same can be said for SCA Hit Network, since they have dropped the 80’s and modernise their playlist the ratings for them improved as well. Lesson for PJ and Dave Cameron don’t try to sound like Gold / WS as you will loose more of your younger target market then you will gain in your older demographics.
Next year in Sydney will be a real battle among the Hot AC / CHR with three stations having practically the same format.
Obviously KIIS will remain supreme but will 2day fm breakfast gain any traction and steal from Nova??? What carnage will we see in Perth, survey 1 will be very interesting.
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Nova will have CHR covered, Triple M has the potential to take listeners from 96FM. I think either Mix 94.5 or 96FM could have problems next year.
Perth has gone from having 92.9 V Nova and Mix 94.5 V 96FM to having Nova out on its own and 3 stations vying for an older audience.
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Probably not. I don’t think Hughesy, Ed & Erin are likely to be any more appealing to the younger end of 2DayFM’s target demographic than either K&JO or Fitzy & Wippa.
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Yes Nova should do very well out of the changes in that market.
For me I feel Mix 94.5 looks to be the one that will have the most problems next year. Their playlist is all over the place now. They are still trying to hold onto elements of their old Triple M past , and be part of the Hit Network aswell.
It is a jumbled mess similar to 2day fm.
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Agreed! The playlist is not good. Way too broad! I understand that it’s a fine balance between alienating your existing audience and trying to win new listeners, but I don’t think anyone who listened to Hit92.9 would be tempted to switch to 94.5 at the moment.
They’re using “Hits You Love From Then to Now”, which is fine, but they have this amazing sounding new imaging (jingles, etc) and then they kick off each hour with a crappy old 80s song (the “then” in “then to now”).
The announcers sound out of place as well. Any attempt to sound “cool” ends up sounding very daggy. Then again, if they suddenly got a bunch of 20 year olds on-air, yelling at me, it wouldn’t sound good either. I don’t think anyone knows what Mix94.5 should be…even SCA.
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Ben and Liam will be doing Nova969 breakfast within a few years. Ultimately it’d better be sooner than later and then they could skew to their correct audience.
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That’s true. They just need to change the playlist and ideally drop the networked shows.
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Interesting survey.
So in Sydney, 2CH listeners seemed to basically vanish into thin air - 2UE was up a little bit, but even then a 3% 55-64 demo share when there was 8% up for grabs from that demo. Worse was the 65+, some went to 2GB, but 2UE dropped, as did Smooth and Classic FM - the other places I’d have expected listeners to flee to.
So there’s digital then - those ratings I generally take with a grain of salt - as they fluctuate so much. I think this is clearly the ceiling for 2CH and it will only fall from here - if the station wasn’t viable on AM with the ratings they had, it won’t be for much longer. My guess is this number is primarily people who were already listening to them on DAB, with there being a very small number of actual AM to digital switchers. The rest seem to have just turned their radios off, or gone to an unmeasured station - I dunno if Sydney have local community stations like Golden Days in Melbourne.
The real worry though is buried in the Sky Sports Radio figure - they went up in this survey. Meanwhile SEN Track is getting 2000 listeners. If SEN 1170 was doing well early, that would show up primarily by the Sky Sports Breakfast share going down - as that’s their most direct competition. It went up instead - that is a very poor sign.
2SM should jump in to Survey 1 - they’ll at least not finish last.
In Melbourne - wow KIIS are doing badly. This post had me thinking:
Not only should ARN finish off the “Pure Gold” network - by doing the above and bringing the music on Mix/97.3 in line with the success of Gold/WSFM - but to go one step further and grow the Classic Hits network by flipping 101.1 over to the Cruise/4KQ format. KIIS can be like The Edge - a Sydney only station that lives on Digital elsewhere.
Sure the Adelaide/Brisbane markets are different - but I don’t think 4KQ and Cruise do well purely because all their listeners would be on Smooth in Melbourne/Sydney - I think there’s a market there that basically have nothing serving them right now. I certainly think it’d be bigger than KIIS 101.1’s 4.5% share.
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Some very interesting observations there @Moe
I like your idea of flipping 101.1 to classic hits. It might impact Gold 104 a bit though.
I agree there is a market for a 4KQ/Cruise station in Sydney and Melbourne.
I also think you’re right that the vast majority of the 2CH DAB listeners in this survey were probably already listening to 2CH on DAB before they flipped 1170. It made me think of my local post office which has 4KQ on DAB - they wouldn’t notice if the AM broadcast stopped.
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That is to assume that SEN won’t grow the sports audience in Sydney, which… is probably a safe bet actually.
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