Why don’t SEN put their asterik ultra-low rating niche sports format stuff on DAB+ and maintain loyal audiences for good rating stations like 2CH and 4KQ on AM? Possible?? Their current bulldozer strategy burns off loyal audiences and replaces them with 0.*** in the surveys.
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Yep … Quantity versus Quality?
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Doesn’t seem like any increase in diversity to me. There are already plenty of radio stations providing sports coverage. Now there will now be no locally-programmed classic hits music station.
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Amen … spot on
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Agree. Diversity of ownership means absolutely nothing. It’s diversity of formats that matter.
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If ARN got $12M for 4KQ from SEN that’s a good deal for HT&E’s shareholders - recently some regional stations changed hands for $800k which puts them below the business league of things like a KFC or Macca’s franchise in most country towns.
No matter how you look at it commercial AM radio is no longer a valuable business in any locations.
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@dutymainttech I see what you’re getting at there, but there’s a big hole in that statement, especially the last sentence.
I’m not sure about now, (some things have changed), but not so long ago (only a few years), the rent on the studio space at World Square Sydney for 2DAY & Triple M cost more than what the stations made in incoming revenue for the year, then you had all the other outgoings on top of that, the other stations in the network were subsidising 2 of the largest stations in Australia.
I also know of a few stations (AM & FM) in regional Queensland that are negative revenue & the other network stations subsidise the running costs of them, & they’ve been that way for many years.
What the networks want is coverage or reach (potential or otherwise), until ARN took over Grant Broadcasters they didn’t have that over SCA, if the network’s big enough it can cover losses at some stations.
You can’t sell advertising to Brisbane if you don’t have ay stations there, doesn’t matter if it rates big or not, sales managers will tell you, we can get your product across XXXX number of ears (potential), smoke & mirrors, sounds better than trying to sell xx number of ears, because you don’t have station in an area, or none of the stations actually rate with big numbers of listeners.
Goes the other way in advertising too, you might have the potential to make $1 million in commissions to a big client base, but if you’re not a very good sales person & can only sell air space to 1/3 of the client base, you’re not going to make anywhere near that $1 million in commissions in actual terms.
If I owned a radio network & I could get some regional stations at $800k, I’d be there, if I had the money to buy 4KQ at even $20 million I would, personally I wouldn’t change anything (unless there was something in the contract that said I had to), but if it was a standalone station buy I’d have to weigh up cost to buy over incoming revenue with the current format & ratings & that might bring the buy cost down.
You hear all the time AM radio’s dead & it supposedly has been for years now & it kinda is in the USA, but that’s because most of the stations run small niche formats & no one’s interested in them, so don’t listen.
I’d argue & so do some pretty intelligent people in the USA that content is king, not the transmission method & that AM radio in the USA wouldn’t be as dead as it is, if there was some wide interest programming on it, such as Classic Hits Music. 4KQ & Cruse 1323 have proved that, when 4KQ won the ratings a few back, not only was it the number 1 station in Brisbane, it was the number 1 rating AM station in the world.
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As a Sydney-sider that kinda fell into the Swans when my league team was axed, I would like to raise my hand and say this is not entirely representative of Sydney 
But those people would probably already be listening to 1116 on the app and RadioApp anyway, so, I don’t know how you’d bring those people over to 1170 (or indeed 693 Brisbane/1620 Gold Coast) because they likely have been turned off by rugby league long ago. Though I suspect that’s not the point either.
And that’s not accounting for the various multicultural communities who may still follow soccer more than they do either major code - but beyond A-League that’s a difficult question to answer in terms of radio.
Both EON Sports and MSR did the easy option of just relaying Talksport all night and focusing on the Premier League, so they could get their Saturday afternoon coverage, but that’s never felt like the right answer - something SEN is doing in New Zealand, admittedly, though not all night every night. [We already get some BBC World Service coverage of games via NewsRadio and SBS’ DAB+ so it’s a harder ask, audience-size wise, to pay News UK for sub-licensing games, I guess…]
I guess the most curious thing SEN did lately was buying rights to Celtic’s last few SPFL games this year (dunno how much of this was contra than actual money, as there was definitely Celtic-specific advertising) so they could celebrate Ange Postecoglou coaching them to a Scottish premiership - which is fair enough, but I also don’t know how much of this was money that would’ve been spent promoting that clash with Rangers in Sydney, that the latter pulled out of. But that’s probably as far as I could imagine non-EPL stuff would go though, at least on an English-speaking station at this point.
Like I said SEN is not just getting an AM station, they are also getting valuable DAB spectrum and they may at some point in the future lease some of that spectrum to another independent, which could involve music, we just don’t know, but if they can make money from it and they have the available spectrum, then it’s an option for them.
If they bring Niche radio 1 & 2 to Brisbane like they have in Sydney and Melbourne, then that will be good for Brisbane radio. Having more AFL and NRL and A-league coverage in Brisbane will also be a positive.
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You have a fair point in that it will be interesting with what they do with that last bit of DAB spectrum. It won’t be all that much though, as they’ll put SEN Melbourne and SEN Track on there like they do in Sydney.
If 4KQ is not going to continue in digital, I could definitely foresee them getting Niche Radio on there in Brisbane like they do in Melbourne [I seem to recall 2KY/Sky Sports Radio is the lessee for Niche’s Sydney space rather than SEN, due to 2CH’s existence, but your point stands]… if only to get radio for Italian and other communities back onto a mainstream space after selling off 1053 to SEN (Niche is on a mid-1600s frequency right now in Brisbane).
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I kinda get the views (although i disagree vehemently) that SEN “may” increase diversity. They may do this and they may do that … its all speculative. However based on their track record so far in glorious Sydney … all we have is a tiny *** rating niche narrow-appeal sports station on 1170 which punted a decent rating broad-appeal station into the weeds. Any SEN stations on DAB+ is not greater diversity…just more narrow casting versus broad casting. And why would more AFL and NRL in Brisbane be a positive? Bris already has good NRL coverage and, like Sydney, AFL is of marginal interest there. This southern Mexican SEN thinking is all wrong north of the Murray.
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Again, ARN had to sell it. It’s absurd to then blame SEN for buying a station that was on the market. They bought it, they own it, it’s there’s to do as they wish. There’s no corporate responsibility or moralistic rule saying they had to keep the 4KQ format.
If SEN rates poorly, that’s their problem, Hutchy can deal with it.
Don’t like SEN, don’t listen simples. Complain to ACMA and make a recommendation that they implement a policy like Ofcom in the UK whereby stations have to adhere to a format based on their license.
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Like wise for Melbourne as far a sport goes. NRL is totally irrelevant, besides we have necks here in VIC. I listened to SEN when it kicked off in Melbourne. Life circumstances changed and it is just the occasional listen these days. Pointless anyone having a crack at SEN for buying 2CH or 4KQ. Both had to be sold for entirely different reasons, so if you are hell bent on a rant it is EON and ARN that needs to be chased. Maybe Ray Hadley could thump the desk over it? How do you type upper inflection Ray speak, Should be a law against these ‘Mexicans’!
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sorry i wholeheartedly disagree. if i was buying in BNE and offered a choice between 4KQ and MMM Brisbane for the same price, I’d take KQ any day of the week. KQ has (had?) a legacy in Australian radio, Laurel Edwards is a Brisbane radio institution (hell i used to listen to her in high school - now i’m married with kids)
how many people remember someone they called answering the phone with “4KQ’s my station” on the off chance KQ were calling? If i owned 4KQ there’s a few things i’d be doing to keep it on top and the first is promoting the hell out of DAB, including getting dab radios screen printed with the 4KQ logo and giving them out.
AM has a future but you need to embrace upcoming tech as well
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Good point but the info nobody on here has is the sales figures for 4KQ or other metro music AM’s - I doubt they would be getting much of a slice of the 25-54 demographic spend which is where the $$$ are - that group have always had FM as their main radio band.
Disclosure - I listened to AM and shortwave when I was a kid - Radio Peking anyone?
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Yeah but lets not confuse the legacy goodwill of the branding vs the transmission medium. I don’t think anyone is saying the branding is dead…
EDIT: Well soon the branding will be dead…damm SEN
Exact sales figures no, but you can probably guess when their 25-39 ratings are (were) usually less than 1% and 40-54 typically in the 2’s…
I tried to listen to SEN at 1:50pm. I think heard 9 mins of ads and 1 min of the show. Might be just unlucky.
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Yeah backend of the half hour is ad-stacked.
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That’s weird. Because SEN would have been playing live AFL from 1.45pm (first bounce), so I’d be surprised if they played 9 minutes of ads during play from 1.50pm to 2pm.
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