The radio industry is now past the halfway mark of radio ratings surveys, following the release of survey 5. Mediaweek has caught up with content executives from around the industry to get their thoughts on how their networks are performing.
Mediaweek caught up with Nine Radio‘s head of content Greg Byrnes about Nine having its largest cumulative audience ever.
GfK Survey 5 of 2022 showed Nine’s talk stations achieved a cumulative audience of 2.013 million – up 10% YOY, this has exceeded the station’s peak during the Covid-19 pandemic. Byrnes said that this was a major milestone for the broadcaster.
“During Covid, Survey 7 of 2020 we basically got to 2 million. What we’ve done today as a network has bettered that result. We knew during Covid that the audience would come to us and the trick would always be to retain that audience. We are really pleased with that figure from a network perspective. People were telling us that we’ll never get back there. That’s quite encouraging today.”
2GB’s Ben Fordham
When asked about what led to these results, Byrnes said that it comes down to the content.
“We’ve just made sure the focus is on content. We’ve been proudly live and local in each of our markets and each of the markets is very different. It can’t be a one size fits all approach. A good example of that is the breakfast programme in Brisbane, which is more aligned to the Breakfast programme on 3AW, than it is to Ben Forham‘s show. Each market deserves the respect and it’s up to us to tailor make our programmes in those markets to ensure we’re giving the audience everything they expect.”
Along with the usual suspects, 2GB and 3AW, a major contributor to this result was 4BC in Brisbane which was up 1.4 points for a total share of 7.7%. Having come over to the Nine station from the now defunct 4KQ brand, breakfast with Laurel, Gary & Mark lifted 2.1 points for a stare of 10.1% – #4 overall in the daypart. Previous breakfast host Neil Breen has moved to the drive slot, where he was up 0.6 points.
Byrnes said that these early results were encouraging for the 4BC brand.
“It’s the best ever cume on 4BC, and the best cume we ever had at breakfast, up 46%. Half of that survey was the new breakfast team and we have a long way to go, but these figures are encouraging.
“It has had that flow on right across the station. Ray Hadley is up, Sofie Formica is up, and Neil Breen in drive sounds fantastic. That cume figure is up across the board so it’s a really good place to be.”
When asked to what expect from Nine Radio for the rest of the survey year, Byrnes said that a large focus will come down to time spent listening.
“Every programme I like to think has TSL in the back of their mind. There’s a lot of loyalty to our brands, which is a great position to be in but we have to work hard to make sure we’re providing that content that the audience knows and rely on.”