The good thing about AIR News is that it doesn’t need to be scheduled right on the hour. So it’s uploaded and ready to air whenever you need it. Pretty much all others are live at the top of the hour so you need to be exact with timing.
I’ve heard it go to air as late as 8 minutes past the hour on Sky Sports Radio.
Yeah it can be delayed, but it’s set to immediate during the day by our manager. I agree with this as news should be on the hour…I’m a stickler for tradition.
The European Broadcast Union’s (ABU) Ezra Eeman recently wrote about the Great Unbundling of Radio.
He says, “If Radio 1.0 is live, linear terrestrial radio with all its magic: connecting people, ideas and music in a schedule that guides listeners across the day then Radio 2.0 can be considered the moment when users got control through interactivity and on-demand content. Very much anything that happened after the invention of the iPod.”
From the above article, some ratings information for the 3-4pm weekdays timeslot from Survey 1 on among the commercial FM stations (exc Smooth in the case of Sydney & Melbourne).
Sydney
The 3pm Pick Up (KIIS 1065): 8.3%
Steve Fitton (WSFM): 8.2%
Kate, Tim & Joel (Nova 96.9): 7.7%
The Marty Sheargold Show (2MMM): 7.7%
Carrie & Tommy (2Day): 5.5%
Melbourne
Gavin Miller (Gold): 13.2%
Carrie & Tommy (Fox): 9.0%
Kate, Tim & Joel (Nova 100): 7.9%
The 3pm Pick Up (KIIS 1011): 6.5%
The Marty Sheargold Show Highlights (3MMM): 5.1%
Brisbane
Carrie & Tommy (B105): 13.2%
Kate, Tim & Joel (Nova 106.9): 13.0%
The 3pm Pick Up (97.3): 6.5%
The Marty Sheargold Show (4MMM): 5.1%
Adelaide
The 3pm Pick Up (Mix 102.3): 16.0%
Kate, Tim & Joel (Nova 91.9): 13.2%
Carrie & Tommy (SAFM): 12.0%
The Marty Sheargold Show (5MMM): 8.7%
And I would love to know how the all music smooth rated at this time. WS and Gold are certainly competitive without the talk.
Personally, when the talk starts the radio is turned off (except for Kyle and Jackie O, as they don’t laugh at each other - unless something funny happens).
If I was a gambler, I’d be putting money on Smooth FM being the #1 FM station (or at least close to it) in Sydney & Melbourne during the 3pm hour.
In the 1970s Rod Muir (with help from a few media people / friends) convinced the Fraser Government to introduce commercial FM radio to Australia so we could hear better quality music.
Fast forward 41 years from when Eon was the first to air and it now has talk in breakfast and drive and sporting shows for most of the weekend.
Ahhhhhh, the good old days when AM music stations played music after 3pm, in drive, at night and all weekend.
In Sydney the two true music stations are WS and smooth; they play music all day and all weekend, the same music all day and all weekend.
Cool but anyone can play any song from anywhere at anytime in their cars or elsewhere. Radio has to evolve they can’t just be a jukebox.
I have to disagree. For me FM radio should be well curated music with low key talk kept to a minimum. No more than BBC R2 levels of talk.
If they are talking on the radio it’s then that I switch to streaming music.
I think the industry is seriously misjudging what listeners want with all these endless talkfests on FM.
The biggest rated shows on radio bar Smooth which is its own universe (which I do listen to if I want calming music in traffic) are personality talk shows. That’s what rates and makes money through activations.
Not sure that’s true in all cases. Anyway in markets without Smooth the listeners aren’t given much choice with all four FMs in Brisbane just a talk fest at times. 4KQ is very competitive in afternoons and drive with music, and it’s on AM!
Personally I think the best music stations are those which play a great mix of music and have relevant talk breaks to add a level of personality/human involvement.
Others will no doubt disagree, but I’m not a particular fan of any show on Hit/KIIS/Nova/Triple M after 3pm. I’d probably say that Smooth 95.3 & WSFM are the most tolerable FM stations at drive (well…during most timeslots really) in Sydney, but even those two can sound a bit artificial at times.
Although Gold in the 3pm - 4pm slot rates higher than the combined KIIS and MMM shows.
In Sydney WS rates higher than MMM, Nova and 2DayFM in the early afternoon.
I like a good talk and entertainment show, but there are few offered to us in Sydney.
But this isn’t exactly a new threat to radio. Radio has had to compete against personal playlists in the car for over 40 years with cassettes and then CD players.
We had a cassette player in our family car in the mid-70s with a big catalogue of tapes, including mix tapes. Even when CDs started appearing in cars FM still reigned supreme.
I think as with a lot of things the ‘newness’ of threats is often overstated, when in fact they’ve been around for a long time. I’m not saying it’s not something to consider and react to but sometimes we have to look to see what worked in the past.
Personally I think the biggest threat to Australian radio isn’t the jukebox streaming stuff, it’s people streaming better RADIO from overseas. I certainly do.
A tiny percentage of the population would be streaming overseas radio, it’s very much a radio nerd thing, or a LOTE thing. Most people are using Spotify or Apple Music. There’s a huge disconnect between the main population and posters on here.
I’m just going by the number of Australians calling and emailing into BBC Radio 2 when I listen daily - they’re certainly not radio nerds, just regular people.
And not to mention all the stations available on things like iHeart, which ARN actually push listeners towards - literally hundreds of overseas stations on there.
Depending on one’s demographic (older) there is ABC Sydney Breakfast with Robbie & Wendy who do a reasonable job with a mix of news, entertainment, interviews, music & talkback.
I totally agree and I love ABC Sydney Drive as well.
I’m so over all the ‘yap yap yap’ of breakfast radio where you only hear 3 songs per hour:-1:
This morning for example Margaux (on 4MMM) was talking about how her 11 year old daughter wanted an iPhone because all her friends have one but she and Corey bought her an Apple Watch instead so she could still receive calls but not use apps,etc.How many times has this been a discussion on breakfast radio I wonder,’ How old should your child be before you give them their own phone?’ :
Exactly! The chat is so inane and boring, it’s the same old discussions over and over… I don’t know how people listen to it.