BotW: The Kyle & Jackie O Show faces ratings trouble in Sydney too; Now the magazines use AI cover models
Welcome to an election day edition of Unmade, written on Saturday morning on a cool morning in Evandale, Tasmania.
Today: Kyle & Jackie O are in more trouble in Sydney than people have noticed; AI marches on; and the Unmade Index pushes up.
Happy World Press Freedom Day.
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D&AD’s global research on AI in creative practice to be revealed at HumAIn
HumAIn curator Cat McGinn writes:
Next week’s HumAIn will host the global exclusive first look at a new D&AD report examining how AI is reshaping creative work, pricing models, and client expectations.
HumAIn, organised by Unmade, explores the impact and opportunities created by AI in the marketing and media world.
The UK-based D&AD, formerly Design & Art Direction, celebrates design skills in creative industries including advertising.
Based on interviews with 291 creative leaders across 55 countries, D&AD’s new report is both a behavioural study and an action framework. It explores key tensions around originality, authorship, and trust, the evolving role of AI in ideation and execution, and the urgent need for upskilling within the creative industries.
The report provides practical guidance for navigating the shift, offering pathways toward more ethical, human-first creative practices.
Findings from the report will be shared by Brainstrust’s Ben Cooper as part of the AI-Augmented Creative Showcase, and attendees will be able to access the full report after the event.
The event will also see a round table session held under the Chatham House Rule, which will include:
Leading the charge: leadership, responsibility, and change management,
The future of work: Upskilling, training and future-proofing your teams,
ethics, environment and governance
HumAIn is this Tuesday, May 6. Tickets are still on sale.
AI voices, AI images, AI planning
Tim Burrowes writes:
Speaking of AI, it was another one of those weeks.
On Wednesday, Meta Festival - the biggest event the company has run locally - put the promise of AI at the centre of the pitch to marketers. Hand over your budget to Advantage+ and Meta will take care of the rest…
On Thursday, while the Australian Association of National Advertisers was gathering at Sydney’s Overseas Passenger Terminal, across town at Carriageworks, Blackbird’s giant Sunrise start-up festival was in full flow. Both were talking about the same thing - the changes AI is creating.
Depending which room you were in, you’d have heard varying levels of positivity. For the most part, those on stage across all three events were incentivised to talk about the benefits.
However, it was also another week where the impact on industry jobs was clearer than ever.
Thursday morning saw the latest set of radio ratings. There was an amusing quirk in the off-Broadway battleground of what industry body Commercial Radio and Audio still insists on inaccurately labelling as the DAB+ category.
More accurately, it’s the category of stations-listened-to-online-or-via-smart-speakers-or-apps-that-also-happen-to-be-on-DAB-but-excluding-stations-which-also-broadcast-on-FM-or-AM. Admittedly, that’s not quite as snappy.
Anyway, in that Sydney battleground there are 35 stations. And guess who won the noon to 4pm slot? It was CADA, the ARN Media network formerly known as The Edge.
The reason that’s of interest is because it’s the timeslot occupied by the show they call Workdays with Thy. Thy, you will recall, is ARN Media’s undisclosed experiment with an AI-generated voice.
Cumulative listening for CADA in the timeslot was 75,000. Next best was 62,000 for iHeart Australia.
To quote Tom Wambsgans, that’s like being the world’s tallest dwarf. On the main AM and FM battleground, the top station for cume, Nova Entertainment’s Smooth FM, delivered 554,000 in the Sydney timeslot.
In other words, using AI to win a battle that isn’t particularly worth fighting makes business sense, even if it represents a lost human job.
Speaking of which, the Daily Mail revealed further evidence this week. It revealed that rather than using human models, Are Media (the magazine publishing house formerly known as Bauer Media, and before that, ACP Magazines) has started to use AI-generated images on the covers of its real life titles That’s Life and Take 5.
The disruption is here.
K&J contagion?
And speaking of the radio ratings, a slight - and I mean slight - pulse for The Kyle & Jackie O Show in Melbourne has been accompanied by the show’s worst result in Sydney in more than three years.
What the market seems to have missed is just how far the show’s average audience has gone backwards.
In the second survey of the year, The Kyle & Jackie O Show’s average Sydney audience was 94,000, down from 102,000 in the previous survey. It’s also well down on the same period in 2023 (128,000) and in 2024 (124,000). It peaked at 141,000 in early 2023.
This week’s result was enough to still win FM in Sydney, although on AM, 2GB's Ben Fordham, with an average audience of 108,000, has now put daylight between the two shows.
In cumulative audience - the number of people who tune in at some point during the week - the trend for The Kyle & Jackie O Show is similar.
From a record breaking Sydney cume of 921,000 towards the start of 2023, the show has dropped to 653,000.
While it’s possible that one factor at play is that toning down some of The Kyle & Jackie O Show’s content to avoid alienating the new Melbourne audience has been a switch-off for rusted-on Sydney listeners, that may not be the explanation. The downward trend began before the Melbourne simulcast started during the third survey period last year.
Particularly bad news for ARN Media is the fact that the trend undermines its story of The Kyle & Jackie O Show eventually being a national one.
With the 4,000 rise in average audience for the show in Melbourne accompanied by an 8,000 fall in Sydney, it’s average number of listeners across the two cities fell to 137,000. That’s a 15% fall since the project began.
For now, The Kyle & Jackie O Show is still winning in Sydney. If that changes, the alarm bells will be loud.
Unmade Index on the up
The Unmade Index extended its upwards trajectory into a seventh trading day in a row. The Index jumped by 1.9% to 533.3 points.
Yesterday’s strongest performer was Vinyl Group - owner of publications including Rolling Stone Australia, Variety Australia and Mediaweek, and music tech platforms Vampr and Jaxsta - which rose by 6.5% to land on a market capitalisation of $129m.
On a good day for the broadcasters, Seven West Media and Southern Cross Austereo both rose by 3.7% to $215m and $167m respectively,and Nine rose by 3.1% to $2.3bn.
Nine’s lift came despite its real estate platform Domain slipping slightly. CoStar is about to enter the final week of due diligence on buying Domain at an offer price of $4.43 per share.
Research house Pureprofile lost 4.2% to land on a $49m market cap. The previous day, Pureprofile shares had risen by 7.9% after revealing solid third quarter numbers and an optimistic outlook based around acquisitions, international expansion and using AI tools.
More from Mumbrella…
Time to leave you to your Saturday.
If you’d like a little more from me, the latest episode of Medialand, from ABC Radio National, is on your podcatcher now. Vivienne Kelly and I discuss the election campaign (of course); the rise of Thy, and the Kim Williams Austen Tashus mess.
Have a great weekend
Toodlepip…
Tim Burrowes
Publisher - Unmade + Mumbrella
tim@unmade.media
It’s Austen Tayshus, Tim, not Tashus. Best fix that up before Kim Williams notices, if you want to continue working for the ABC.