Radio station branding/positioning

I wanted to reply to this post but didn’t want to go off topic in the Grant Broadcasters thread. Plus, I believe we had a similar topic on the old forum so…

Yep, I agree.

Also, I’m not sure about Brisbane but most new radio brands in Sydney have only ever stuck if the station has had a complete relaunch (eg, Smooth 95.3 and KIIS 1065) or a minor tweak (eg, 2BL to 702 ABC Sydney and 2WS FM 101.7 to WSFM) to an established brand. Maybe a possible exception would be 2KY to Sky Sports Radio but I don’t think that was a particularly major shock to the system knowing that 2KY was primarily branded/positioned as a Sky Channel/Racing radio station (complete with a 2KY logo in the old Sky Channel/Racing style) in the last few years prior to rebranding as Sky Sports Radio around 2009/10-ish.

Magic 11, pretty much anything on 2SM after 1988, Vega, Classic Rock 95.3, Sydney’s 95.3 and Hit 104.1 2DayFM are just among the many new brands in Sydney radio that have failed to gain much traction over the past few decades.

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I noticed a major rebranding in San Francisco with KISS FM (KISQ) changing to The Breeze; both brands familiar to Australians They are currently playing 10,000 songs commercial free. The new tag is “relaxing favourites at work”.

There are quite afew articles about it. This is one

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2UE and 3AK’s launch as CBC in 1986 was a huge dud in Melbourne… even though it had some ex-3AW talent such as John Blackman and a celebrity lineup of Channel 9 identities. CBC only did marginally better in Sydney but survived enough to build up to the top ratings that later followed.

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been listening to them all week - it’s too all over the shop.

And for people worried about branding of The Fox - why not?

They changed Adelaide, Perth and Brisbane to Hit and the ratings are fine - why not unify the whole network with one brand? If not Hit, why not use The Fox?

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To me it feels like Foxtel “owns” that brand in the media marketplace. Would the public wonder why Foxtel was setting up a radio station?

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@MarkHD
Because Hit is generic and people know what it means.
People in Brisbane, Sydney and Perth would be like “what’s a fox got to do with radio”.
Trust me, people in the other states would be like WTF.

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I live in Sydney but I loved the Fox logo that was used in the 80s and 90s of that very cool fox. He even featured in TV ads at the time.

I loved it when 4IP (I think) used the slogan “A nice set of hits”. It always made me think that a great slogan for a dance station would be " Dance Your Hits Off".

One of my favourite slogans was also 2SM’s “It if fits, wear it”. I have no idea what it meant though.

Another great slogan was when 2UE was a music station for about six months in the 90s - “All Time Greats All The Time”

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and can be reworked as SHit by others. Not smart.

The Fox is cheeky, irreverent, something the network should do.

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not on radio it doesn’t. Fox FM was first.

Foxtel don’t play in the radio space, no matter what they think.

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if they brought back the fox character it would work. They should in Melbourne at least not the silly H logo.

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@MarkHD
Yes Fox FM was first, before Foxtel… In Melbourne!
Everywhere else Foxtel was first and unless you’re into radio like people in this forum, nobody outside Melbourne knows Fox FM exists. I’m not defending the Hit brand but at least it makes sense in a generic/positioning way. Fox makes no sense to anyone outside Melbourne.
The other aspect of the argument is that it’s an “old” sounding name anyway. The target market for the Hit network is under 30 - what do these people think of foxes? Especially as they will already think of Foxtel as an ‘oldies’ brand, lord knows what they think of Fox FM. It only works in Melbourne because it has some history there, but SCA will even drop it there at some point because it’s too “old” (think SA FM and B105 - both seen as too old for the audience). Yes foxes are “cheeky and irreverent” and have a vague connotation of sexual innuendo - if you’re a 45 year old man that is :slight_smile: Not exactly the market they’re going for.

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@TVHead
Only if they changed the station to target people who remember that fox character and started playing 80s and 90s hits :slight_smile:

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But then again, someone thought HOFM was a good idea… :joy:

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they are already playing 90s hits

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Sounds like a Channel Ten media release!

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4IP when they started using this call sign again in late 1989 had the slogan “A Great Set of Hits” I remember I had the bumper sticker on my little yellow Ford Laser I had back then😊

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Following the re-branding of Kiss FM in San Francisco to The Breeze, Big 103.7 (KOSF) has now rebranded to iHeart80s 103.7. This is the only station I know to use iHeart as part of its name and will be a broadcast version of the iHeart80s streaming “station”.

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Not too heavy, not too soft… 92 MORE FM.

During the early 90s MORE (Middle of the Road) FM in Wellington and Christchurch was distinctly soft AC (as opposed to the Hot AC Auckland).

But a positioning statement that said what they weren’t rather than what they were, never really quite cut it.

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I have some DX reception recordings of the same positioner for “The Breeze on 89.8”. Other station brands heard from NZ back then were K-Double C FM and Kiwi FM.

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That’s some nice sporadic E action right there.

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