Despite what people in the Melbourne radio market might think, Sydney is where the industry’s trends are made and unmade, just as in TV, so that’s why some of the results in the fourth survey of 2008 indicate a significant change is underway in radio.
The biggest manifestation of this is the rapid decline of Alan Jones’ dominance in Sydney breakfast: his share is down sharply in the past year, and especially since the November federal election.
In media terms, Jones is the major victim (if we have to have one) of the change in Government and the apparent changes in the Australian community that Rudd and Labor were able to successfully tap.
Some in radio are now saying that the biggest trend in radio in recent years is that the talkback formula developed by legendary Sydney producer, John Brennan at 2UE and 2GB, is dead. “Struggle street”, the John Brennan formula for talkback radio in Australia, is out, and that means the yelling and hectoring style so beloved of Al Jones, Ray Hadley, Steve Price, Mike Carlton and the departed John Laws is no longer relevant, perhaps because its practitioners failed to understand the changed mood in Australia that last November’s Federal election marked.
That means the cynical strategy of plumbing the petty jealousies of people in western Sydney towards those in the east of the city, of sensationally targeting politicians and the political and social elites, is much less effective than it once was. (Is that also why the News Ltd tabloid, the Sydney Daily Telegraph, is also doing it tough, with circulation sliding?)
702 is more creative (an hour of comedy and music from 5.05pm to 6pm — on Fridays on Richard Glover’s drive program) helps make it the highest rating talking drive program in Sydney, as does around 25 minutes of chat between politicians, arts critics, journalists and life matters. Self improvement on Wednesday, where an obscure topic is discussed (classical Greek history for example) gets higher figures.
Even the derided Deborah Cameron on 702, a complete newbie when she started at the begging of 2008, is doing better than everyone bar the shouting Ray Hadley on 2GB. Adam Spencer in breakfast on 702 talks about maths puzzles, science and politics, as well as the joys and pitfalls of riding a bike to work at 4.30am. Alan Jones for example is driven to work.
But it’s the continuing decline of Alan Jones in Sydney breakfast radio, the most competitive and lucrative radio timeslot in the country, that best exemplifies what is happening.
Jones and his station are being stalked by the underfunded 702. It has fewer resources than the commercial AM talk and FM stations and yet it was the big improver in the most recent survey and is now a clear number two in the market behind 2GB.
The radio audience figures show that more people listened to 702 in the last survey than listened to 2GB. 589,000 people listened to 702 Monday to Friday according to the latest figures compared to 476,000 for 2GB.
2GB’s share was 11.6 Monday to Friday, down from 11.7: 702’s share was 10.6, up from 8.9. A year ago 2GB’s share in survey 4 of 2007 was 13.7 (13.6 in survey 4) and 702’s was 7.6 (down from 9.3 in Survey 4 and a low point).
Jones is still in front with a 13.8 share (15.2 previously) but Adam Spencer has closed to a 12.2 share, up from 10.1, indicating an enormous fall in the past year. In survey five last year he had a share of 17 (16.8 in survey four) and 702 breakfast’s share was 10.1, down from 11 in Survey 4.
And it’s significant that at a time when high oil and petrol prices, as well as food costs and interest rates should have provided fertile ground for Jones and Hadley, as well as Mike Carlton and Steve Price on Fairfax radio’s 2UE, they failed to make any impression. The ABC improved in the face of those “struggle street” issues.
Is that why Brendan Nelson is struggling with his 5 cents a litre off? Australians want to hear something substantive, not a band-aid or a crude appeal to our emotions or hip pocket, and they are prepared to listen?
Meanwhile, there was little discussion in The Sydney Morning Herald of the poor performance of Fairfax radio’s 2UE talk station in Sydney. 2UE’s poor performance was lumped into a final paragraph with other stations. Its share fell to 6.6 Monday to Friday from 7.1, a drop of half a point and its share in breakfast, mornings, afternoon and drive, all the important timeslots, fell.
Macquarie Radio’s easy music station, 2CH, now has a higher share than 2UE (at 6.7) Monday to Friday and outrates it in the morning and afternoon shifts. 2CH also has more listeners on weekends. Surely that was a story for the SMH news editors?
There’s no doubt the failing Fairfax and Macquarie talk-back products are now going the way of the Liberal Party. In the last ten years or more you’d swear GB and UE were being programmed from Howard’s headquarters. Hardly insightful or honest with radio audiences that sit way beyond Sydney. UE’s Laws and Price have long resonated along the NSW and Qld eastern seaboard after some deal with the bizarre and vast resources of Bill Caralis – which in itself is another and malodorous story. In other words there are huge radio audiences hopelessly disadvantaged by media networks allowed to deliver sub-standard, irrelevant and skewed information and entertainment (??) via our airwaves. It is more than time for radio industry regulators to get off their buts and do an A-Triple C by calling for wider regulatory powers.
Jones will always appeal to a core demographic of older, conservative listeners and this explains why he has been winnig the breakfast shift in Sydney for for well over a decade. Ray Hadley will almost certainly step into his shift when he retires and provide GB with continuity. The Parrot is 66 and probably only has another year or two in him on air – if that.
The Sydney talk radio market is obviously a lot stiffer than it is in Melbourne, with both 2UE and the ABC 702 competing with GB. 2UE could make a dent on both GB and 702 if they improved their morning slots. Mike Carlton’s brand of sneering, second-hand “satire” is about 20 years out of date and Steve Price has always been far too ‘Melbourne’ for Sydney Radio. 702 would not be enjoying its current run in the ratings if 2UE got its act together.
How the untalented, big noting boofhead Jones ever made the impression on the ratings he formally did, beggers understanding. Of course he had the assistance of his mate the lost little loser, Howard, of whom he boasted, he had the ear of whenever he wanted. How now Jonesy? Kevin Rudd sorted the parrott out early on and as he has done with Cassidy on Insiders, you tete a tete with the Liberal media attack mongrels ie; Akerman and Bolt, you dont get the i/v with the PM, given the non stop absurd, personal vendettas being carried on by these three in particular, fair enough for KR to pull the plug on those programmes interviews. Doubt he is looking to be treated with kid gloves but non stop personal attacks, with Akerman even suggesting he will bring the Prime Minister down with his fanatical obsession with the so called non event the Heiner Affair, we still await some 12 months on, this momentous happening. Any wonder there is a non appearance in place on some shows.
So if this is the end of Jones, bye bye birdie, doubt there will be many tears shed.
Alan Jones can take his pick. He’s a symptom and a casualty of an industry that’s been dying a slow death for years in the absence of stringent standards, guidelines and control. Radio’s unique qualities of portability, immediacy and skilled delivery of sounds and imagery have been fully flicked by licence holders who prefer to use it as a hoakey cheap megaphone and not a powerful communications force. And they’ve used radio programming to deliver opinionated talk-back only to come off second best. Jones is a prime example of why radio is dying. Sure a great debater and editorialist but as an apologist for the Liberal Party that folded last election, so did his career. GB took a big punt. So has UE with Price dabbling in anything that crosses his mind. It’s not riveting communication or interaction with the listening audience, more something you thumbed through in your dentist’s waiting room five years ago. Media networks have (for want of better words) f**ked over the radio industry by milking and plundering and putting profit first. The end result is an industry now unable to deliver creative, cutting edge communication on our air waves. Just because people can write a news column, dance like a star, coach a footie team or file brilliant material as a war correspondent, doesn’t mean they can draw a radio audience. Nor does a gaffe-free news bulletin sound riveting if there’s no energy, guts and punch. Real radio is a magical experience. Only a miracle will bring it back.
“Is that why Brendan Nelson is struggling with his 5 cents a litre off? Australians want to hear something substantive, not a band-aid or a crude appeal to our emotions or hip pocket, and they are prepared to listen?” It’s not just Brendan Nelson and the Opposition who are struggling to understand Australians
right now. The media generally , which seems to be angling for an anti-Rudd, anti-Government angle on almost every issue hitting the press and airwaves, is not having much influence on the Australian public as opinion polls tell them very clearly. Even the recent Nielsen poll did not reflect in any sense the view of the commentariat that Rudd is losing his honeymoon glow. The public is not listenting to a commentariat which devotes enormous time and space to jibing about new policy reviews lacking substance even before reports are in and action planned and which encourages whinging from those directly and negatively impacted by long overdue and foreshadowed policy outcomes. And much as the public might say they want changes to petrol excise when asked directly in a one sentence opinion poll, there is a broad understanding in the electorate at large that the issues of peak oil, petrol pricing and climate change are all part of a huge tangled problem to which a knee jerk vote winning answer is just not available or wise. The common sense of Australians is reflected in the latest Newspoll which counters the populist and immoral stance of the Coalition on petrol excise.