A difficult decision looms for ARN
Welcome to an end of week update from Unmade. Today, a tricky decision on the Kyle & Jackie O Show for ARN Media. And further down, Seven West Media’s share price slumps as the company slashes its rates to try to hang on to share.
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ARN Media’s next Kyle & Jackie O Show decision gets even harder than it was before
In theory, yesterday’s numbers should have been a good day at ARN Media.
In Sydney, ARN’s WSFM was the number one station for weekday share for the first time in its history.
From 9am until 7pm onwards, WSFM won in every timeslot. That included ‘Ugly’ Phil O’Neill deposing 2GB’s Ray Hadley after 20 years on top for the talkback king. Like the movie cliche of the cop trying to get through his last day on the force without being shot, Hadley lost his crown with just two surveys to go until his retirement.
And in Sydney breakfast, ARN Media’s Kiis won too, with Kyle & Jackie O winning across both FM and AM.
The problem child of ARN Media’s Melbourne strategy got a little worse though. The Kyle & Jackie O Show’s share slipped from 5.2% to 5.1%, leaving it bottom of the pile in Melbourne FM.
But The Christian O’Connell Show, on ARN’s Gold, improved by 0.9 points to a 9.2% share.
However, that COC bounce was overshadowed by Nova’s Jason Hawkins, Lauren Phillips and Clint Stanaway adding 1.4 points to take top FM slot with an 11% share.
Melbourne is not where ARN faces the tricky choice though. For better or worse, they’re locked into giving the Kyle & Jackie O Show time to find an audience. And Gold, Fox and Smooth are all within a share point of each other for top station.
Brisbane is the dilemma. The long term strategy for ARN Media to pay for its expensive deal to retain Sandilands and Henderson is for it to gradually become a national show. That was how Hawkins, Phillips and Stanaway ended up as victorious refugees at Nova Melbourne when they lost their Kiis Melbourne berth.
As recently as a few weeks ago ARN was signalling that further cities would be unlikely next year. But the Game Changers Radio podcast pointed out that something seems to be afoot in Brisbane. Throughout one episode a few days ago, the weather and content featured Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane in what could well have been an effort to create sample clips for Queensland advertisers.
Such decisions usually happen at the end of the year, so the timing makes sense too.
It’s easy to say it with hindsight (and nobody was publicly pointing it out beforehand), but for the Kyle & Jackie O Show, Brisbane has more in common with Sydney than Melbourne does.
But yesterday’s ratings made that call even harder. Kiis Brisbane had a great trip. It may have been unwelcome good news. The breakfast slot, featuring Robin Bailey and Kip Wightman, jumped by 1.6 points to a 12.1% share. That was second only to B105.
If the Kyle & Jackie O Show networks in and immediately falls, as would be likely, at least initially, ARN Media would risk looking as foolish as they have for letting the Jase & Lauren Show slip over to Nova in Melbourne.
The Robin & Kip Show in Brisbane delivered Kiis an average audience of 45,000. By contrast, the average for the Kyle & Jackie O Show in Melbourne was 40,000.
ARN Media boss Ciaran Davis and content director Duncan Campbell get the big bucks to make the difficult strategic calls. This is a particularly tricky one because the correct decision will not be clear for a number of years. The headlines will go against them if audience share falls, even if the operating model makes more sense financially. That will in turn shape advertiser perceptions, making the decision trickier still.
It’s more pleasant watching this one from the sidelines than it will be making that decision.
Seven West Media stock price slumps as it slashes ad rates in bid to hang on to market share
Seven West Media’s share price slumped by 6.1% yesterday on one of its worst days of trading of the year.
The fall came in the same week the company held a series of smaller Upfront events added into the calendar at short notice after many of the executives responsible for delivering last year’s event were made redundant back in June.
And on Wednesday, Mi3 reported that Seven West Media has brought in former IPG Mediabrands boss Henry Tajer who has proposed “steep rate discounting and eye-popping incentives to agency groups if they hit certain volume thresholds”.
According to Mi3, Tajer’s presence is as a result of the loss of senior experience at Seven following the unexpected decision to make revenue boss Kurt Burnette redundant. It quoted an unnamed media buyer saying: “They got rid of some very senior people and all the IP and knowledge that went with it. They’ve put themselves in a tough position – they have gone super aggressive on rates, but they’re not the only ones.”
Seven’s market capitalisation fell to $239m yesterday, close to the all-time low of $224m it briefly hit in August.
Meanwhile, out of home minnow Motio’s stock rose by 7.7% after an upbeat presentation at the company’s annual general meeting. The company said that in the first ten weeks of the financial year, revenue was up by 61%.
The Unmade Index was down nearly 1% yesterday, to 425.6 points. That number is still just above the all-time low of 423.6 hit a fortnight ago.
Time to leave you to your Friday. If you’re in Perth, Adelaide or Melbourne, hopefully I’ll see you at Compass next week.
I’ll be back with Best of the Week tomorrow.
Have a great day.
Toodlepip…
Tim Burrowes
Publisher - Unmade
tim@unmade.media
