Southern Cross Austereo (Regional)

Agree. Also Hitz FM Bundaberg is another example.

1 Like

It’s a similar story with 7HO FM in Hobart, where it outrates Heart 107.3 (now Triple M) & is the #2 commercial station behind Hit 100.9. Of the commercial stations, it is #2 in breakfast, afternoon, drive & evenings, and is #1 in mornings. It is also outright #1 in the 40-54s.

The problem with 7HO and Hot Tomato is the awful playlists

Probably the reason they have shifted younger / hotter recently in the summer months. If majority of their Triple M stations are falling behind their competitors in the different markets.

Central Coast is another example where recent ratings had 2GO at No 3 - behind Star and Sea FM.

1 Like

I don’t agree with networking announcers unless it’s necessary, but access to that quality content when required, in my opinion the SCA regionals should do what’s best for the respective markets, for example Gold FM should focus on music, works best for their market, KO should cover more sport, where other markets may take more shows to fill time if needed, whatever it takes to provide what the listeners want at a quality standard. Triple M can provide that for these stations where required or if the station choose not to then that’s fine but they need to take this approach for both music and content. KO needs to broaden the playlist to have more 70’s music and more Classic Rock, Gold may want something different and 4TO different again.

On another note I heard “Starboy” 3 times between 10 and 5 at work today on HIT, and that was dial flicking.

That’s pretty subjective. I like the Hot Tomato playlists as do many listeners it seems.

2 Likes

Tom & Olly are leaving hit104.9 The Border (ex-Star FM), after 2 years as the station’s breakfast announcers.

Sure. 4GR had a full roster of local announcers. Very successful, captured a large slice of the city. Not the case now. Lack of investment now.

I venture to say that a lot of the programming that isn’t nationally known yet networked from the hub (i.e. not H&A) is according to local people actually a local voice. Figuring that they don’t know that they aren’t local, SCA can promote the live and local angle even if most of it isn’t. (Does that actually make sense?)

I don’t think they could, it would be false advertising, even if listeners don’t realise that most non breakfast programs aren’t Local at all.

Could still be clever about it; promote the regional angle, for example.

I think you need at least one local daypart announcer, just so they can get out into the town on the occasional OB, SCA Newcastle has a stack of casuals at the moment, (dare say though and personally don’t blame them) they wouldn’t want to go to regional locations, but offer a good deal get them out with the people, promoting the the station and promoting the local businesses that provide that important revenue. A wise GM told me, get out to the opening of an envelope. I like what SCA do but one thing I really don’t like is the networking of dayparts where a local alternative could be done so much better. I understand budgets but at least 1 local day announcer really is needed.

3 Likes

I think the HIT FM stations could at the very least have a local announcer in the morning until 12pm instead of networking from the Gold Coast from 9am weekdays.

Albury is local til 12

Most listeners should know that the announcers in the networked programming aren’t local, it’s not hard to work out, I mean for example the announcers never talk about anything local that going on around town, they don’t say the stations local name etc. You could online right now tune into e.g HIT 99.5 Sunraysia and fine the same announcer on HIT 100.3 Mackay.

Is that for both HIT 104.9 & 105.7 Triple M or just Hit 104.9?

Triple m is til 4pm

1 Like

More than half the hit stations have a local mornings announcer, with a few of the larger markets also having afternoons local. The exact stations will vary from time to time though as the network feed is used when the local hosts are on holidays or sick as well as when an announcer has left the station and they are in the process of filling the position.

Almost all of the Triple M stations have at least one local announcer, with about half of them having 2.

Hopefully they’ve been making some improvements recently then.

I was in Port Macquarie / Coffs Harbour in October and I’m pretty sure STAR had the same announcers after the breakfast shift for the remainder of the day.

By memory Coffs Harbour is one of the few that do take the network feed all day. It thought Port a Macquarie had a daytime announcer, but not 100% sure.

1 Like