Meet the man whose job is to tank his ratings
Welcome to an end-of-week update from Unmade.
Today: Are the crashing ratings for Kiis Melbourne a disaster, or 3D chess? Plus, a wall of red on the Unmade Index.
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On tour
I’m on the road next week. I’d love to catch up with anyone in the industry who’d like to do so.
As previously mentioned, I’m in Perth from Monday to Wednesday, March 18-20. My schedule is almost full, but please shout out if you’d like to say hello.
I’m then spending all day on Thursday March 21 in Melbourne, and Friday March 22 in Hobart, ahead of Saturday’s Diemen Awards ceremony.
If you’d like to grab a coffee in any of those cities please email me at tim@unmade.media
Tanking the ratings as Melbourne waits for K+J
First, a correction.
Much as I hate getting stuff wrong, you should correct prominently when you do.
Last Saturday, I wrote that the start date for The Kyle & Jackie O Show in Melbourne would be 8am on Tuesday of this week. It wasn’t. That turned out to be the day Kyle Sandilands came on the show that is being kept (luke) warm for him by Byron Cooke, to announce the actual start date
It’s April 29. Where I’d gone wrong was that I’d briefly tuned in (or whatever the streaming equivalent is) to Kiis Melbourne last Friday because Mumbrella had (as it turned out, also incorrectly) tipped this would be the surprise launch day. I wonder if I was the only listener who misunderstood what Cooke was repeatedly telling listeners, when he announced that Sandilands and Jackie Henderson would be on air at 8am this Tuesday.
Anyway, Sandilands gave those on the school run early practice in changing stations: “It’s like the first time you saw a waxed vagina. You were shocked.” They then took the analogy further. I wonder if the Melbourne listener complaints to owner ARN Media have started already.
Hear the audio between Sandilands and Cooke:
Poor old Cooke. There’s nothing dignified about his role for the next six weeks, acting as high priest for absent gods, hyping up the congregation for the moment the immortals descend.
Sandilands didn’t help him - when Cooke, who he described as an “arse licker” diffidently mentioned he would have an announcement about his own future soon, the Sydney DJ couldn’t have been more disdainful: “Don’t bother”.
In the meantime, Cooke has a unique radio role you could write a sitcom about.
His only job is to get as terrible a number as possible, to make Sandilands and Jackie Henderson look good when they get their first result. It’s like a night watchman in cricket whose job is to get bowled out.
If their first number goes backwards, it would be a PR disaster. That’s why they haven’t started already.
So far, so good.
From a 9.1% share for the final outing for Jase Hawkins and Lauren Phillips (who have since moved to Nova) in Survey 8 at the end of last year, Cooke turned that into a 5.9% share. The average audience fell from 69,000 to 42,000 - it only happens about once a decade that a show loses 39% of its audience in a single trip. Last time was when Sandiland and Henderson left 2Day FM in Sydney.
Mission half completed.
Not that any of this reflects on Cooke’s professionalism, by the way. Cooke is the ultimate radio journeyman. He even won International Radio Personality of the Year back in 2012. He was previously a steady anchor for Fifi Box and Jules Lund’s Hit Network drivetime show.
Cooke is following the plan to play the music, tell listeners what the song is and keep reminding them that the Kyle & Jackie O Show is coming.
The diaries are now out in the field for Survey 2, which runs until March 30. Cooke’s job is to drive down the number some more. If he played some personal compositions on his banjo on air next week, I wouldn’t be surprised.
The ratings calculus gets trickier from here. The first Melbourne survey involving The Kyle & Jackie O Show is Survey 3, which drops on June 4. The survey period will cover about half of their time on air, and half Cooke’s. Because surveys overlap, even Survey 4, covering April 14 to June 22, won’t be completely their own work.
It means the full verdict won’t arrive until Survey 5, covering May 19 to August 10, is published on August 27.
In the meantime, it appears that much of that leaking audience stayed with ARN Media. While Kiis lost 3.2 share points in the breakfast slot, sister station Gold gained 2.9. That saw Christian O’Connell regain the FM top slot previously ceded to Fox FM’s Fifi, Fev and Nick show.
Incidentally, The Kyle & Jackie O Show slipped slightly in Sydney, with share dropping from 16.7% to 15.4%. They retained number one FM show, but were overtaken for overall lead by 2GB’s Ben Fordham, who delivered a 16.6 share.
There’s also a radio world beyond Kyle & Jackie O. Here are a few other highlights:
Nine Radio wins metro battle.
When it comes to average audience across the five cities, Nine Radio landed as top network, despite not having a station in Adelaide. Admittedly, most of the number comes from the dominance of 2GB in Sydney and 3AW in Melbourne. But it improves the story as the network sales team takes their national Olympics story to the market.
Meanwhile, the next three networks - Southern Cross Austereo’s Hit, ARN Media’s Kiis and Nova Entertainment’s Nova - landed on an absolute dead heat, with all three averaging a Monday to Sunday audience across the five cities of 146,000 each.
The ABC’s four offerings were well behind
Nova wins drivetime
Nova’s drive trio of Tim Blackwell, Joel Creasey and Ricki-Lee Coulter, narrowly helped the network win the 4-7pm drive slot, just ahead of Kiis and Hit Network.
ABC Radio National Breakfast stabilises
And the ABC’s flagship radio show, RN Breakfast is showing signs that it may have hit bottom, having now gone two surveys in a row without recording a new low. However, with an average five city metro audience of just 51,000 in the 6-9am slot, the show is still struggling to claim national relevance.
Indicator red again on Unmade Index
The pendulum swung again on the Unmade Index, with movement of more than one percentage point in the index for a fourth successive day.
This time it was a negative swing. Our chart of the movements of Australia’s listed media and marketing stocks lost 1.37% to land at 571.1 points.
With the exception. of the dual listed News Corp and holding company Enero, every other stock that saw movement went down, despite a flat day on the wider ASX All Ords.
In the big league, Domain took the worst hit, losing 3.26% and nudging majority owner Nine down too.
Ooh Media lost 2.47% and Seven West Media 2.44%. The two big audio stocks, Southern Cross Austereo and ARN Media, lost 1.03% and 1.8% respectively.
Time to leave you to your Friday.
I’ll be back tomorrow with Best of the Week. I’ve beeen thinking about the Royal picture PR debacle and the platforms’ multi national battles. Plus, I’ve got my hands on some intriguing news consumption data which feeds directly in to the Facebook debate. More on that tomorrow.
Have a great day.
Toodlepip…
Tim Burrowes
Publisher - Unmade
tim@unmade.media