The other reason they are struggling is they’ve all become relays of capital city stations with little to no local programs or relevance.
Triple M Griffith would be mad to convert to FM. The coverage that gets out on 963 is enormous.
However Triple M Wagga on 1152 is terrible, and would be a vast improvement if/when it converts to FM.
Griffith is 5kw and Wagga is only 2kw, that would be part of the issue.
7SD is on both AM and FM, Griffith could mount a similar case to keep AM on air as well as simulcasting on FM so it gets the best of both worlds.
And yet they did do the comparison in the Sale survey (which showed in that part of the market, they’d more than doubled to 9.8% as MMM, from 4.1% as Hit three years ago). Makes it even more bizarre, listing it as a “name change” for Sale but a “debut”, an entirely new station, in Warragul. Is that sort of thing, something within SCA’s control? Well aware in the metro surveys that the names on the surveys aren’t entirely what they use on air, for instance.
In terms of the “other stations” figure… 2016 was the last time they included Sale stations in the Warragul survey and ACE’s stations combined for 13.5%. Comparing the numbers for Sale from a similar period, I can’t imagine the ACE combo in Warragul in 2022 being much different, just skewed much more towards TR FM than 1242.
Note that 2022 is the first time that ABC Radio Melbourne was in the surveys so that wasn’t part of that before either. So the comparable “other stations figure” on the same basis as 2019, would be closer to 55%. Fair chunk, esp. as more of the western side of the market start seeing themselves as “Melbourne” I imagine.
Of course with the necessarily small sample size, and Xtra only quoting “station listened to most” as a headline figure besides cume, the numbers are of course vulnerable to bouncing around. I can’t imagine some of the figures are directly comparable either, with the 2019 Warragul sample having being taken during the AFL finals while this year’s was in November, but that definitely doesn’t explain all of the big drop in AM listening (and you’d have expected it to bump up MMM as well). Bit hard to find an AM radio outside of a car in the past few years after all.
There’s 2 issues at play here.
The public service of providing radio service. This means that in cases like Griffith they should definitely stay on AM so that they can keep serving the whole community.
The commercial side of getting more listeners, ratings and therefore money.
In many case’s it’s false thinking to think that a wider reaching AM signal delivers more listeners. The vast majority of people in a licence area live in a town that can receive the FM signal well. This is seen in the ratings by the FM stations always rating better than the AM stations.
Looking at Griffith, Triple M rate 16% compared to Hit on 33%. Compare that the markets where both stations are on FM, Hit and Triple M rate close to the same. So if Triple M Griffith were to convert to FM, they might lose listeners that are way out of town, but there ratings would most likely actually go up.
It’s a catch-22 situation. Being on AM might better serve people out of town, but FM better serves people in town of whom there are a lot more. For Griffith, like Scottsdale, a compromise of being on FM and AM might work, but that’s not realistic everywhere.
If I were a radio operator I’d more worried about falling it’s ignificance being stuck on AM rather than continuing to serve the fringes of the coverage area. It might be harsh for some, but in 10 years an AM station will be a station for no one.
The rebrand to Triple M brings them closer to 3GG so some of Triple M’s gains will have been at the expense of 3GG. But AM radio is on the decline everywhere. Not only is it harder to find an AM radio, but the audio quality is decreasing too as interference increases and no/minimal care is given to keeping the transmitters/towers running optimally. And AM is harder to find in cars too. On most modern cars, even those with AM tuners, it’s harder to switch between FM and AM (in my Mazda isn’t about 4 clicks to bring up a menu to switch) so people will settle on FM where there’s more stations and text to tell you what station it is. The expectation is that all stations are listed and it’s easy to forget about turning or that AM even exists.
I presume they’d also be putting it on the same tower as Hit, which is on top of Mount Bingar, where WIN TV’s transmitters are located - the 2RG (Triple M) transmitter is on a lot lower ground, certainly not an appropriate spot for an FM transmission I imagine. Whether they choose to pump out 50 kW OD like they do for Hit or not, I imagine they’d be covering a fair bit of ground on FM with a decent signal - not that there is too many outside of Griffith itself.
The ABC is comfortable enough with FM for that area for local radio (which may also influence why SCA want to go FM - I know there is 675 but they rarely promote it) so it presumably can’t be too bad given a decent enough location.
There is also the cost and maintenance considerations for running an AM station compared to FM. Is it cost effective to run both?
Interestingly the version of the Warragul ratings on the commercialradio.com.au website does include HIT as a comparison to Triple M, so I think the real question is why radioinfo.com.au did the electronic white out…
The footnote is also different. I’d guess that Radio Info had an early release that was updated before publishing on the CRA website. I did notice that the CRA website didn’t have the ratings yesterday afternoon when I was posting the above comments.
You’re spot on with your comments on AM radio, especially in cars. It’s obvious from regional radio ratings that people just flick between the FM options available. AM is a dead duck regardless of any advantage in reaching the fringes of licence areas. Because of the degradation and interference issues even that is dubious, especially at night. Leaving a commercial station on AM only is a death knell. Metro AM might survive with the help of DAB until streaming takes over…maybe.
Triple M Albany on 783AM has gone against the trend and increased its share in the past two surveys.
Starting at 7.4 in 2016, it’s now above 10% in 2022.
That is a mighty effort against a dominant ABC Great Southern who had a massive drop last survey but still rating No 2.
They were meant to convert to FM, but discussions have gone very quiet.
4AM must be pleased with their result. They likely continued as usual whilst Hit ran whatever promotions they could to ensure top of mind recall for what is essentially a phone recall survey with many flaws.
And who develops the parameters for such responses by Xtra? Commercial licensees.
They set their own guidelines to then display on flaky survey marketing collateral.
Any ratings for Bundaberg/Wide Bay Qld? I’d be interested…
Even if there was one, i doubt Rebel and Breeze would get listed anywhere because they are not in direct competition with SCA or 4BU/Hitz
The last time Bundaberg was surveyed in 2021 (probably won’t be surveyed again until 2024): https://www.commercialradio.com.au/RA/media/General/Documents/Licence%20Area%20Profiles/update/BUNDABERG-XTRA-INSIGHTS-PUBLIC-SURVEY-RESULT_1.pdf?ext=.pdf
(Summary - station most listened to: Hitz939 30.7, MMM 17.9, 4BU 12.3, ABC Local 12.0, Triple J 7.9, Classic/NewsR/RN 4.3, “other stations” 14.9)
In Wide Bay-related places, you’d also consider Maryborough (surveyed last year) and to a lesser extent Gympie (surveyed this year). And no, there’d be no Rebel/Breeze in those; they’re not paying to be surveyed.*
For what it’s worth their other stations figures were ~23% and 42% (!) respectively - the latter likely due to a weak Super Radio-owned 4GY which only rates 5%. Quite possible there is more for the pickings in Gympie for a Rebel/Breeze when the only real “local” competition in the music space is Zinc, although there are likely some Sunshine Coast stations being picked up in that figure too.
I imagine Rebel would be commissioning their own info (which I imagine would be primarily based on reach figures and net-promoter-score type stuff given their wide remote base) but they’d be keeping it close to their chest for obvious reasons.
(* and if they’re not, would the numbers be accurate anyway? I got the impression that surveys like these were slightly push-polled, in that you’d get a list of stations in the survey to tick off the “most listened” and then an “other, fill in here”… so there’d be a slight bias away from the “others” for not being listed. But maybe that impression is incorrect.)
I love the Bunbury market.
It’s good to see SCA are really getting a run for their money from Hitz939 (which IMO isn’t the best name for a radio station).
It’d be good to see how the new Triple M Bundy brekkie show goes there. They really need to pour solid resources into the SCA station there - as they’re outnumbered.
I presume that was a typo and you meant ARN for Hitz (they’re part of the same group as River 94.9 that they acquired from Grants) and I guess the fact those numbers come from June 2021 mean, it’ll be a while before we see what they tinker with as they integrate them into the wider network.
But it does mean that there are still two local competitors, which is more than most regional markets get (admittedly QLD markets are sometimes better than some others there) and it’ll be interesting to see the ARN vs SCA battle there in future.
Whoops yes.
ARN (then Grants) are giving SCA a run for their money in Bundaberg.
Being local can help you easily win. BOG should take some points from this - especially in Newcastle (then again, let’s face it… NewFM isn’t as local as we all think - as they’re carrying the responsibility of serving a FM network. If NewFM was truly local, their music would truly reflect that of the Newcastle market, not a Super FM Network).
I wouldn’t underestimate the impact of Rebel and Breeze in Bundaberg and Maryborough. I’m from Wide Bay originally and have a lot of family in the Bundaberg region - Breeze is having a big impact and filling a much needed gap. There’s also a lot of affection in Bundaberg for Hitz929. It’s been around a long time with very little chopping and changing. If I recall correctly it was among the first regional FM station to air in QLD. The people I know up that way still refer to it as “the local” station, almost in the same way as 4BU is/was regarded. But there’s a lot of general awareness of Rebel and now Breeze.