Radio Today understands that among other changes expressed in a memo to staff today, Mat Eggleston’s role of Hit national ops manager has been expanded to become a duo role including NSW head of Hit content (including 2Day).
In a key change to the SCA content team structure, the role of Newcastle content director will be combined with that of NSW group regional content director.
That change will see current 2DayFM CD Jase Allen take up this new position, leading the Hit and Triple M NSW regional team, as well as overseeing SCA’s Newcastle stations.
The structural changes also mean that Mike Byrne will no longer look after Hit and Triple M Newcastle. He is set to remain at SCA in a yet-to-be-disclosed role.
The changes will also allow Sea FM and 2GO boss Peter Yiamarelos to focus on his Gosford-based stations, which SCA called a “critical market”.
It won’t happen, but here’s an opportunity for Super Network Newcastle to “hit” SCA where it hurts & beat them in the ratings.
An outsider telling Newcastle what they want to listen to won’t work for long.
The Sydney SCA stations don’t rate, & not sure the change of 2DAY breakfast will help, but they’re all out of ideas, Smooth rates well & is mostly music with no shit chatter, so hey what the hell?
Most other regional NSW markets don’t have any competition, so no surprise SCA stations are most listened to.
Laugh of the decade, SCA says Gosford is a “critical market”, that’s why they got rid of everyone, ripped the heart out of the place, & watched the ratings tumble.
The following story has already been mentioned on the “Random Radio” thread, but Radioinfo has picked it up.
SCA warns shareholders of a revenue drop and share price falls 22%
Southern Cross Austereo has provided shareholders with a trading update warning of a downturn in revenue following an 8.5% decrease in the September quarter figures when compared to the prior year.
All commercial radio dropped by 10.2% in the same period and SCA, the owner of the Triple M and Hit Networks, says EBITDA for the first half of this financial year is now expected to be in the range of $60M to $68M.
Why has radio revenue dropped (over 10%) all of a sudden? What has caused this big drop? SCA very much dependant on radio revenues which they consider the core of their business.
There’s been a huge correction in the advertising market this year.
Spend via agencies have declined over 10% since this time last year.
This year has been a major ad recession due to the inflated booking over the last couple of years (same sex marriage, elections, Olympics etc…) - The only thing this year was a federal election.
The Australian is reporting that private equity firms like Oaktree could be looking to buy Southern Cross Media after its profit downgrade earlier this week.
Peter Bush, chairman of Southern Cross Media Group, at the annual general meeting today seemingly signalling that SCA is ready to do deals to dispose of its television stations. He just has to hope Nine, Seven and Ten or WIN (or someone else?) come knocking.
