Ever wonder what the BC stands for in Nine’s Brisbane-based talkback station, 4BC?
Apparently, it’s “Basket Case” – at least according to many of the increasingly irate staff members toiling away within the station’s Cannon Hill studios.
It then goes on to list the salaries of each announcer , their ratings and comparison to 4BH.
Peter Fegan at breakfast on $200,000 is rating only just ahead of “the fatal 4.3 per cent mark that saw his predecessors, Laurel Edwards, Gary Clare and Mark Hine, axed last September.”
Turns out that the highest paid presenter is the lowest rated in Sofie Formica.
Sofie Formica, who pulls in $240,000 a year, attracting a meagre 4 per cent audience share – less than half of Gavin Miller’s 10 per cent on 4BH.
Worse yet, we’re told secret internal “adjusted figures” for her show’s true run time actually revealed her audience share was an abysmally low 3.2 per cent.
Would just cannibalise 4BH for the over-55s market. Not sure than anyone wins if they do that.
Surely there’s room for a commercial talk station on Brisbane? Sydney and Melbourne manage it with big ratings. But they’ve had a few cracks at it and never got it right.
Actually it was the pre-networking era that killed 4BC. “It’s just like the ABC but with ads”. See radioinfo article from October 2013 titled Fairfax Radio’s new strategy. The breakfast show with Ian and Loretta reached the lowest share in 4BC’s history.
They then jumped to be a 2GB relay and ramped up the hard line right wing stuff. That and the loss of localism didn’t help them.
As I said, I reckon there’s a market for a talk station, even if not as big a market as there is in the southern capitals. But I think it needs to be more 3AW than 2GB in style.
Dear lord what a light rundown on 3AW Drive today.
They have spent a whole 25-30 mins taking calls on the triple J Australian hottest 100.. surely this should have been on the 5pm block of the show.
There’s heaps happening locally and nationally and it’s the best they can do? Jacqui run out of Bayside stories to talk about?
not defending the show. I never listen to it. But the 3pm hour is probably better for lighter stuff before going harder at 4.00 when there are probably more switching on? Just IMO.
However, 25-30 minutes still seems a bit excessive to that one topic. Was it just an excuse to have boomers call up to have a whinge about the music tastes of woke ABC listeners.
It’s literally what’s happening, people ringing in with song suggestions from the 70s and 80s… this is afternoons content.
While I agree 3pm is the earlier hour, they have gone from an interview with Wayne Gatt to the hottest 100 discussion. I really feel the tone of the show is just produced wrong. It’s all over the shop on an average week.
Today because there isn’t a gang crime or a bayside issue to talk about it’s a fluff show.
I’ve noticed that 3AW’s evening news (8pm onwards - Tony Tardio did 7pm) has been coming out of Sydney for the last little while now…I suspect it’s a permanent change.
Sometimes i swear 2GB gets news from 3AW as well. What I have noticed is that some of the news readers in the evenings are really bad. To expose them to Sydney and Brisbane is bad enough but to Melbourne as well that’s even worse. The morning readers are much better however.
You can always tell when 2GB news is coming from Melbourne. The journos sound like something from the 1980’s mixed with a bit of the ABC. A much more formal sound than.
I was listening to overnights recently and the only thing they spoke about in sport was the AFL, that was the giveaway that the bulletin must have been from 3AW.
Industry speculation about Nine’s plans to sell its talkback radio division – which includes Sydney’s 2GB, Melbourne’s 3AW, Brisbane’s 4BC and Perth’s 6PR – has been swirling for the past year, but the media company has refused to publicly acknowledge its plans to shed its audio arm before finalising the $2.8bn sale of its real estate business Domain to US property giant CoStar.
Sources claim Nine has already received at least four approaches for the radio network, with one of the unsolicited offers – from emerging media player Australian Digital Holdings – worth about $42m, while the other initial bids all came in under $30m.
Other high-profile business figures rumoured to be involved in the preparation of formal submissions to purchase Nine Radio include media mogul John Singleton, former Nine CEO Mike Sneesby (with backing from US investors), Perth billionaire Kerry Stokes, high-profile talent agent Nick Fordham and Rode microphones chief Peter Freedman.
ARN Media boss Hamish McLennan publicly declared his interest in buying Nine Radio in January, but conceded that a bid would require the relaxation of the federal media ownership laws that prevent companies from controlling more than two radio licences in any given market. ARN is already home to the KIIS FM and Gold radio networks.
Could Newsmax actually be putting in money into ADH? Especially if they’re supposed to become the Australian arm of Newsmax. Having something like the Nine talk radio division would be handy for spreading their crap around the place.