Perfect. They should’ve done this from Day 1. Now Sydney listeners are going to be a little confused - as they’re unsure of which direction 2UE is going down. Mind you, I doubt the music will be tweaked much.
ACE is clearly hoping the changes at Gold101.7 will make listeners flock to 2UE Classic Hits.
The difference with 2UE v 4BH is in Brisbane, they actually lost a top rating station which was playing the classic hits format. In Sydney, there’s no top rating Sydney station playing classic hits. Not unless 2UE play the exact same music as WSFM was last year, I doubt we’ll see much impact to 2UE’s ratings.
With old Pure Gold talent, it looks like they’re stepping right into the space left by Gold going slightly newer. The news to sports junction on 2UE was branded as SEN, why?
Apart from Melbourne’s Gavin Miller, who has Sydney’s 2UE got across from WSFM?
Listening to the station this morning and their branding is all over the place. Announcers referencing, “Sydney’s 2UE”, imaging referencing both, “Easy Music” and “playing more classic hits from the 70’s”.
It looks like (if anything) they’ve reduced the number of announcers on the station. They should’ve at least kept Sydney-based announcer at breakfast on 2UE. They need a big ex-WSFM announcer - maybe Rob Duckworth or similar.
The late Ron E. Sparkes would’ve been perfect for Classic Hits 2UE Breakfast.
I think the goal was to capture the 2CH market initially, now its WS listeners?
In my view they just need to have Rock/Pop/Easy oldies ie the charts of 60s-90s. Not always sleepy just great classic hits to keep you dancing through the day.
Let us not forget 2CH had the positioner “classic hits”, which worked well with the call sign. It was an own interpretation of “classic hits”. WS version of classic hits was very different from 2CH’s version. i98 was also a classic hits station when it first converted to FM and it was different as well. Heck even “Gold” in my view goes back to 2WS being a solid gold station and was an older format.
Better music and more of it on 2ST / 2EC etc is very different from the 90s 2day Better Music and more of it.
Anyway 2UE as classic hits can still be “easy” just different branding.
It feels like now that the branding assets of Magic 1278 and 3MP should swap.
With 4BH, 2UE and Magic 1278 all now Classic Hits, 3MP is kinda now the outlier and so it feels kinda odd that Magic 1278 is the one with the different colour scheme and logo. I do like the 4BH/2UE/3MP logo, the roundness looks nice in RadioApp.
