I would have kept her there and built the show around her.
‘Ash London and friends’ or something.
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Absolutely thrilled, only heard of Ash before she did Edge breakfast, has been a brilliant addition to the show. Wasted doing pre-records on More FM nights. Happy that they extended her till the end of the year. I do like Meg though, have become a big fan of the Clint, Meg & Dan trio.
They still might ‘Hayley Sproul’ Meg at breakfast. They are friends outside of work though…..
Some show changes at NZME next year:
- All music brands breakfast shows will be extended by an hour to air live 6-10am (currently only 6-9am). Some shows already start at 5am with a replay hour.
- Brian Kelly to finish his Country Sport Breakfast show on Gold Sport this Friday, ending a 45-year career of breakfast radio at NZME. Gold Sport to continue on AM without a breakfast show.
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First point is good, a breakfast show running to 10 (especially a local one) is always a good thing
Second point is sad - I haven’t listened to Brian much but I know he’s quite talented, will be a big loss.
Queries:
- how well is Gold doing in the ratings? Is it just going to become music and sport now, and be totally host-less? (comment above indicates probably yes as the breakfast show is disappearing)
- how well is SENZ’s replacement rating? I seem to recall it did really badly in the last survey.
Terribly. About 100 listeners in Wellington at breakfast I recall in the most recent survey.
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At least 1 person listening to the cricket commentry last week, saw it on TVNZs coverage, with extreme close up of the radio (commentry was audiable too)
That’s crazy. They’ve poured a tonne of money (millions, isn’t it?) into a station that - in a city of around 300,000 - 100 people listen to 
And that’s only in one city. Hell, I bet all the “Other” stations combined would have a higher listenership for less than what it’s cost them to set it up and run this one.
How long until this incarnation goes off the air, I wonder.
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FWIW, they will just point to the “Total NZ commercial radio” ratings, which to be fair, isn’t that terrible.
Breakfast got 10,000 listeners in that ranking.
Also keep in mind the impact of major sports in offseason.
The latest survey included the All Blacks and most major sports in NZ.
They aren’t pointing to any ratings because they are terrible across the board.
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Owned by the TAB so they do have a bit of cash but gambling companies not in the business of loss making either
Yes but 10,000 listeners out of a potential audience of several hundred thousand isn’t actually that good.
Hell, even Concert FM - catering to a very niche audience - rates better.
I guess my thoughts are is there enough audience in NZ for two sports stations?
There’s really only one sport station. The other one is more Gold than sport (with a regular sport-focused brekky offering).
And that offering got half of Sport Nation’s equivalent.
I understand we can’t go back to the heyday of Radio Sport pulling 72,000 in breakfast and even 17,000 overnight.
Gold Sport effectively exists as a farm (excuse the pun) rural/sport station for smaller rugby union games that Newstalk ZB doesn’t want to carry.
Sport Nation is a sports station but neither carry much audience clout.
Sport in NZ has gone through an interesting few years - for all the talk about being a sport-mad nation, it really isn’t true.
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ZM has $1Million to win during the summer - the biggest prize money ever on NZ radio. I suspect they will be running this when normal programming resumes in mid-Jan but contesting to get in the draw over summer.
One lucky ZM listener will get the chance to dig it up.
There are 100 dig spots.
- 99 spots have $10,000
- ONE spot hides a life changing $1,000,000
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Terms and Conditions https://zm.iheart.com/media/j13ougyy/nzme-terms-conditions-million-dollar-summer.pdf
Up until the 25th of January you can get into the draw. Whittled down after that to 5 and then 1 final person. As with any competition like this $10,000 is essentially the core prize.
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Could Entain / TAB NZ cut their losses by selling Sports Nation back to SEN, allowing SEN to use it to expand the SEN Turf brand, while still retaining an advertising partnership for TAB NZ?
A localized version of SEN Turf could realistically succeed where SENZ did not.
Sean and Steph’s final day was today on Edge Arvos.
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Don’t think SEN would be interested, from what I’ve heard.
They tried and it didn’t work.
Respect SEN for giving it a go but different market.
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Remember the old Buy-Sell-Swap segment, which used to be a big part of Community radio stations pre-millennium? The internet (Trade Me, &c) wiped that out. I guess, internet updates and sporting apps might have done the same with Sports Radio.
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I think that’s a part of it - but also NZ doesn’t have enough professional sports teams that play often enough to cycle conversations. They still work well in UK and US - and to a lesser extent Australia.
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