ARN has made several redundancies of on-air talent from its youth-targeted station CADA with the breakfast team – Kian, Avneesha and Yaz – and breakout stars Flex and Froomes all departing the station.
The departures follow a strategic “reshape” of the CADA content team in May. At the time, ARN said the changes aimed to focus on the on-air talent and resulted in a small number of roles being impacted.
ARN’s chief content officer Duncan Campbell told Mediaweek the company remains committed to the brand with the changes reflecting the challenging economic conditions.
“A huge amount of effort has gone into CADA, but we remain committed to the brand,” Campbell said.
“Two years ago we commenced building the CADA brand – at the time it was new and unique, and something we hadn’t tried before at ARN. But despite the strong survey results and the audience growth we’ve seen through the DAB results, the achievement we were getting from an audience perspective wasn’t translating into the desired commercial outcomes,” he said.
Duncan Campbell
“With challenging economic conditions, we had to adapt to the circumstances and have made some changes to the structure and format, and we regret that has impacted some people’s roles. It wasn’t a decision made lightly.”
Describing the station in 2024 as “scaled back”, Campbell said while the details are still being arranged behind the scenes, from a listener’s point of view, the changes won’t impact the sound of the overall brand.
“It won’t sound like a cut-down, badly put-together radio station,” said Campbell. “It will sound like CADA, like a proper radio station. It will have fewer resources behind the scenes, but that doesn’t mean that the output will suffer at all.”
Campbell wasn’t able to confirm who might be on the CADA lineup in 2024, saying that is another aspect the team is “working our way through”.
“There’ll be some new voices on air, but it will still be CADA. We remain committed to the brand, and when times improve and the economic cycle comes around, then ARN will reinvest in CADA so it can realise its full potential.”
In the most recent GfK radio ratings survey, CADA was the top DAB station in Sydney with 150,000 listeners.