I’m not sure why you’ve referenced this to me? I really liked some of the original presenters or those before Craig took over SEN but never really listened to Mark Fine. Looks like he’d be having a crack at me too then! 
I personally wouldn’t want anyone to lose their job but that is the concern of their boss not posters posting an opinion on here. SEN has been rocky from the start but it used to be a good radio station until this person took over. He’s spread resources too thin catering to his ego!
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I don’t get the obsession with ACE buying 2CH and 4KQ. Sure, what they’re currently doing with 2UE and 4BH is proving popular (especially with the anti-network crowd of enthusiasts here), but the reality is that apart from being a reasonable option for a Spotify playlist they’re adding minimal value to the community. They’re run with almost no expenses - a couple of local presenters who work from home, but all back of house operations are done remotely in regional Vic. They have no local studios. Almost no interaction with listeners. Voice tracked for most of the day. It’s not bad, but it’s hardly great.
And much of the success of 2UE and 4BH is because they’re the only music station targeting their audience, having clearly picked up a lot of the old 2CH and 4KQ listeners. If those stations went back to music, it would just fragment the audience. You just need to look at how Magic 1278 and 3MP are going in Melbourne. They each have a cume similar to 2UE, but a much lower share in a similarly sized market. It’s almost certain that despite the different positioning, there’s a lot of crossover of listeners switching between Magic and 3MP.
It might be a nice romantic idea for there to be a resurgence in AM music listening, but it’s not going to happen and I just don’t see the business case for ACE radio to add 2CH and 4KQ to their stable for minimal overall gain in listeners. Or to spend in the vicinity of $10-16 million to buy those licences (hopefully transfer their audience) and hand 2UE and 4BH back to Nine. There’s probably contracts in place about who owns that audience anyway (Nine would want something for it), but that just leaves ACE open to competition from warm stations which the audience is currently on.
I reckon if you really care about the radio industry, we should be cheering on SEN. They employ countless staff in junior roles who will be the future of radio - far more than any AM music station has in a long time.
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The big question is - for how much longer can they employ these countless staff members?
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I agree. This is an opinion forum, and the responsibility lies with management alone.
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I disagree with many points here. Firstly they are not just AM stations anymore - they are AM/DAB/Online stations. As time progresses the fact they are/were on AM isn’t relevant.
For many years 4KQ and 4BH co-existed as music stations in Brisbane - until very recently - and both rated around the 6 - 8% mark. There’s no reason they couldn’t again with the help of DAB and Online.
But I think what I disagree with the most is the assumption that the current incarnation of 4BH adds “minimal value to the community”. Really? Given their resources they do a pretty good job of engaging with the audience to the point that most listeners wouldn’t even know a big chunk of it is voice tracked. Not that I’m a fan personally, but take a listen to the breakfast show and see how often the random phone call is answered by the listeners with “4BH is my station” to win money. Think it went off 4 or 5 days in a row last week.
Also, let’s not forget that until 4KQ was blown up a year and a bit ago, it had more local shifts than the FM’s. That was only a little over a year ago and there’s no reason that couldn’t be resurrected. The FM’s in Brisbane are at a stalemate judging by the ratings over recent years, so a Classic Hits 4KQ and Easy Listening 4BH would add much-needed format variety. Spotify doesn’t come close to what they were offering.
Why would supporters of the radio industry cheer on SENQ, when it rates 0.6% and isn’t getting any more listeners… ever.
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In the same vein literally a quarter of Adelaide if not more (given the unique demographics of the market) would despair if Cruise 1323 were to be bought out by SEN. A tad more unlikely as they already have 1629 there but still.
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How do you figure that?
Correct. AM music listening is literally a dying. You think when current 40yo’s get to 70 they’re suddenly going to stop listening to Spotify or Apple Music and start listening to AM music. Please!
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Well, the other stuff wasn’t rubbish until it was de-SEN-sitised. I wouldn’t trust SEN to run a chook raffle properly.
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SEN can survive in my view, but some hard decisions will need to be made and soon in order to convert it into a sustainable operation especially with a credit crunch looming.
My proposals would be:
-sell every commercial licence aside from the flagship 1116 in Melbourne. It’s clear that the ratings aren’t there and better to cut the losses and claw back some of the money spent on these acquisitions now while the AM band still have a bit of life in it.
-cease purchasing any new licenses unless they are narrowcast/off-band licences and are available at a cheap price.
-sell off the investments in basketball/netball teams- sports broadcasting is supposed to be SEN’s core business, not owning sports teams. They used the logic that they “are a sports broadcaster, not a music broadcaster” to justify killing off 3MP a few years ago (prior to it’s revival), I’d argue the same logic should apply here
-retain some DAB spectrum in Sydney and Brisbane as part of any sale and run a barebones “SEN NSW” and “SENQ” service. In Melbourne they could have the full suite of SEN 1116, SEN Fanatic for overflow and SEN Track all on DAB+.
-retain the off-band licences and run them as barebones operations, relying primarily on 1116 for content.
-closing the silly online only stations like SEN Geelong and SEN Ballarat that regurgitate 1116 99.9% of the time- it’s a waste of bandwidth and I question whether it even attracts many local advertisers or listeners.
-renovating the app and website to put live sport front and centre, having dedicated channel streams for different sports that can be called up via a smart speaker or by pushing a button on the app e.g. “SEN AFL”, “SEN Cricket”, “SEN NRL”, “SEN Premier League” etc.
-shifting SENZ over to the SEN Track format (outside of live sport) and ideally relaying racing from NZ. The frequency used to be owned by the TAB I believe so there’s potential to recapture some of that audience and by the sounds of it there’s great potential for profitability based on the SEN Track experience in Australia.
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There’s a thing called DAB … And online
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Such a narrow view.
Let me rephrase @melbviewer’s post - You think when current 40yo’s get to 70 (circa 2050) they’re suddenly going to stop listening to Spotify or Apple Music and start listening to DAB+ or a crappy 64kbps internet radio feed?
Those are some good ideas and what may keep SEN sustainable in the long run.
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In 30 years everything will be online so there will be no difference between Spotify and Online. There is unlikely to be terrestrial radio as we now know it. It’s about how broadcasters get there, or not as the case may be. I also don’t get the assumption that today’s 40 are only listening to Spotify. They’re not.
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I would disagree with this - there’s not the racing interest in NZ to sustain it, hence why TAB got out of radio in the first place. The precious TAB audience was miniscule too.
In addition they’re the only bookmakers legally allowed in NZ so there’s not likely to be enough incoming.
I’d wave the white flag in NZ. Concentrate on Australia.
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Also not like there’s actually a lot of native racing to broadcast anyway - NZ averages about one meeting in each code per day and it’s staggered towards the end of the week (Mondays is one greyhound meeting and that’s it, for instance). There was also the fact that Trackside was actually free on TV (besides the need for a UHF antenna) for a good while, alongside Sky’s pre-satellite offering… so I suspect the NZRB (as it was then) were happy enough to let someone else run the radio side, before Mediaworks got out of it in 2015. Owning their own radio stations likely wasn’t hugely desirable.
I’m sure SENZ are comfortable with still having the NZ TAB as a partner, but it’d be as much for sports betting as it is racing, as it is here. (Worth noting that even the NZ TAB isn’t what it used to be - after being split from the on-course racing side, management rights to their TAB were outsourced to Entain, owner of Ladbrokes, starting in June this year.)
But the whole market seems thin, and I wonder if there’s also the stereotype stuck from Radio Sport that it’s a “man on the tractor” sort of thing to be listening to the cricket, say (they do have the rights to that this summer) on the radio rather than watching it on TV.
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Finey fans out there (me included), Mark Fine was a guest on Tony Moclair’s show today (17/11/2023). Get it now wherever you get your podcasts.
If SEN pulls out of NZ, who’s going to broadcast live sport in the country? There are many Warriors, All Blacks and international cricket matches that need radio coverage.
They don’t have the All Blacks rights or any rugby played in NZ.
I’d imagine Gold Sport might pick back up the Warriors or cricket.