Smiles for John Singleton and for the ABC. But DMG, the most aggressive company in the Australian radio industry, has reason to be more than a little concerned this morning after the second last radio ratings figures for the tough Sydney market were released yesterday.

John Singleton’s 2GB and his star breakfast announcer Alan Jones again dominated the top of the table in the sixth radio ratings survey of 2005. But it wasn’t such a hot time for Jones’s competitor and critic Mike Carlton on the other major commercial AM talk station, 2UE.

2GB finished with a share of 11.7, unchanged from the fifth survey, with Alan Jones on 15.5%, far ahead of Carlton, who fell a number of places to finish seventh in breakfast with a 7.8% share (8.2). 2UE fell to an 8.6 share from 9 in the previous survey.

The ABC AM talk station, 702 wasn’t much impacted by the defection of breakfast announcer, Angela Catterns to the new DMG station Vega (it has yet to be measured) or the loss of Sally Loane in mornings. 702 lost some ground though: its overall share was 9.5, down from 9.9.

But the myriad breakfast announcers clumsily auditioned on air by management after Catterns walked managed to hold 702 in second place behind Jones with a 12.0 share (12.4 in survey 5).

The morning stint was shared by Sally Loane and a stand-in for the survey (most of it was Ms Loane) and there was hardly any shift, down to 8.9 from 9.0 in the last survey.

The result does make a bit of a mockery about the reasons why Ms Loane was punted by 702 management: that she alienated certain listeners. Clearly in 2005 she didn’t and it will be a big test for her replacement, Melbourne gal Virginia Trioli when she starts on air next month.

702 had a sharp drop in afternoons where James Valentine presides: he lost some listeners when he filled in breakfast straight after Catterns jumped and changed the format: that saw him moved back to afternoons.

John Laws, the old ‘Golden Tonsils” is looking more silvery, or even bronzed at the moment: his morning share for 2UE sank again to 9.7 from 10.6, a noticeable loss.

The DMG music station Nova though was the big loser: its overall share dropped very sharply to 8.2 from 10.2. Merrick and Rosso, the morning lads saw their share plunge to 9.0 from 12.1. DMG is also starting the Vega Network with the Sydney one up and running and Melbourne joining them.

Singleton’s other station, 2CH saw a slight rise to 6.0 from 5.8, proving that there’s still interest in the wrinkly demographics.

Austereo’s stations 2Day and 2MMM both had very solid surveys: 2Day rose to 9.4 from 8.9 and Triple M (Austereo) had a good survey with a very tasty jump to 8.4 from 7.4. The Australian Radio Network’s MIX fell to 7.9 from 8.6, but its other Sydney station, WSFM edged higher to 8.3 from 8.2.