97.3FM tops Brisbane radio ratings
Posted August 9th, 2011 by debritz
The champagne corks will be popping in the Brisbane suburb of Stones Corner, with 97.3FM celebrating a win in the radio ratings. In second place is B105, which last week lost one-third of its breakfast trio, followed by Nova. In fourth place, in a tight field, was Triple M (based on by-session results) or 612ABC (on demographics). 612ABC's Spencer Howson remained the No.1 choice for breakfast listening, followed by 97.3's Robin Bailey, Terry Hansen and Bob Gallagher, B105's Labby (Jason Hawkins), Camilla Severi and Stav Davidson, and Nova's Tim Blackwell, Marty Sheargold and Meshel Laurie.
In another surprise, 4KQ's Laurel Edwards, Mark Hine and Gary Clare overtook Triple M's The Cage with Ian Skippen, Greg Martin, Greg Sulivan and Emily-Jade O'Keeffe, to claim fifth place in breakfast. 4BC's Peter Dick and Mary Collier held steady to be be seventh place, and 4BH claimed the wooden spoon among commercial stations, both in breakfast and overall. (It was also beaten by ABC youth network Triple J.)
The results are especially good news for the Australian Radio Network (ARN), which owns 4KQ and half-owns (with DMG) 97.3, but not so good for Fairfax which is trying to offload its radio network, including the lowly ranked 4BC and 4BH. While commercial talk stations are blitzing the field in Sydney and Melbourne, BC is being outgunned by 612ABC in every session except mornings (where Greg Cary has a slender lead). And while 3AW is the bolter in Melbourne, it's the John Singleton-owned 2GB that's winning in Sydney, with Fairfax's 2UE taking another hit in the latest Nielsen survey. Back in Brisbane, Farifax's 4BH is clearly losing the battle for the golden oldies to ARN's 4KQ. (While BH is claiming an increase in cumulative audience to 190,000, its audience share is down.)
Austereo, owners of the once all-conquering B105 and Triple M, also has cause for concern, with the departure last week of Camilla Severi adding to its woes. The new management following Austereo's merger with Southern Cross was probably expecting a better outcome. While it's far from a dire result, I think there will be some retooling of both the B105 and MMM breakfast shows.
DMG-owned Nova 106.9, which led the way in breakfast for several years, is holding steady, mostly gaining listeners across the day, but will be keen to regain the top spot in breakfast - especially, if rumours that Laurie is leaving, to be replaced by Severi, are true.
Hi Brett what is the finishing order overall?
97.3, B105, Nova, Triple M/612ABC, 4KQ, 4BC, Triple J, 4BH, ABC Radio National, ABCFM, ABC News Radio.
The current state of Nova is a disaster. They launched with a eclectic but popular mix of genres on their playlist, a intelligent line up of announcers, witty and clever station sweepers and idents. The phrases "never more than 2 ads in a row" and "sounds different", were a breath of fresh air. For a freshman station to be in the number one position for so long was a remarkable achievement.
It wasn't until Hamish and Andy started to dominate the drive shift that Nova lost a single time split. I am not sure what happened after that but then the Nova drive (which was performing quite well against H&A) was jettisoned for a networked program.
The playlist was slowly morphed from a mix of songs and style to a B105 top 40's pop high rotation yawn fest. The humour that was once present in the station promotions suddenly disappeared and became very "try hardish".
Their ad policy thrown out the door in favour of large blocks of commercials.
Never mind the dumbing down of the breakfast show after Ash and Kip left to encourage lowest common denominator audience participation.
I'll admit that I never really liked Ash Bradnam's interview style with his "how much money do you bank" questions or Meshel's opinionated views. But usually between the three, one of them had an opinion I could agree with.
Now I find myself shaking my head at both the announcers and the listeners wondering whether or not some producer has been instructed to only take calls from the outer suburbs from guys called Daz, Barry or women called Shaz who would rather buy a ute than a dictionary. Couple that with Fitzy and Wippa in the afternoon and you have Bogan radio. With a teeny-bopper playlist.
DMG you wonder why your ratings have suffered? Bad jokes, stupid presenters, listeners who spend half their time in a Centrelink queue so they can throw a new muffler on the Holden, a flood of advertisements and music so cringeworthy and repetitive it makes your ears bleed. The only thing keeping Nova in the top 3 is the fact they're probably bleeding listeners from MMM right now.
I have trouble liking people who like 97.3 I've left 3 jobs now due to that repetitive crap station being played all day, makes me want to demolish the building I'm in. They play the same music every single day year after year. What is wrong with people? At least if you are an artist you know your music is shit if this station plays it.