Australia’s Austereo – worth learning from
If you want office-envy, and you work in the radio industry, you’ll be wanting a walk around Austereo. It’ll make you really depressed at the rubbishness of your own radio station offices: from Global’s lived-in Leicester Square headquarters, to the nicely refurbished Absolute Radio, to the newly rebuilt BBC Broadcasting House, I’ve yet to see anything better than Austereo.
Wander round Austereo in Sydney, and you’ll be impressed at the natural light, the space, and the clear branding of Triple M that permeates the main building, situated right in the main shopping centre of the city. In the ground floor, there’s a coffee shop and a cafe, and a queue of people being shepherded around by 2day FM uniformed girls. A studio, with glass walls, holds the 2day FM morning presenter; outside, people enjoy a coffee and a sandwich, watching her at work.
Austereo in Melbourne is a little walk south of the Yarra river: into a cooler area of town than the CBD, close to the Crown Casino – until recently the largest casino in the Southern Hemisphere, and the home of the Commercial Radio Australia Awards this year. Get access into the building, and you’ll enjoy the dark, modern, feel of the studio complex, and the gorgeous studios themselves, branded with the Fox/2day (“Today Network”) blue blobby star thing. (I’m sure Austereo have given a name to it. I was going to say it looked like a supernova, then realised Nova is one of their competitors, so decided not to.) Above is a photograph of the newly-opened Melbourne studios – the presenters to the right, the producers in the to the left; and I’ve more photos if you want.
My tour round Austereo Melbourne is with Corey Layton, who’s worked in London and is, by all accounts, delighted to be back home. He enthuses about Austereo. He introduces me to the guys working on the digital radio stations – Radar (a mostly unsigned music station) and Jelli (much like dabbl in the UK). Wandering round to the web guys, they show me their content-rich websites: video of the ’stunts’ that Australian radio is famous for; the kind of talkability that radio used to have in the UK before the BBC or Ofcom got terrified of doing anything that might garner one complaint.
Jeremy Macvean shows me round Austereo Sydney. We sit and look at some of their websites. Jeremy shows me some of the commercial opportunities that their websites have opened-up to sell. He discusses the 2day player, and says that this is one of the things he’s working on, wanting to improve the information that’s available. He discusses content management systems, and it’s not long before I’m letting him know about a station in the UK using freely-available tools to produce a great website, and giving him a useful contact.
Commercial radio here in Australia was, to a large degree, insulated from the worldwide recession. They’re using digital (both web and DAB+) as a way to innovate; to try new ideas for programming and revenue generation. They’re very aware that DAB+ won’t earn money for a number of years yet; but very keen to find out what will work in this new world. This isn’t a half-hearted, low-staffed operation: instead, Austereo are seeking to grasp the opportunities available with both hands, and have resourced it accordingly.
Austereo calls itself “one of Australia’s most progressive and exciting entertainment based media companies”. For once, the hubris is true. Austereo is a shining example of a company that is investing in digital media: not because the shareholders want them to, but because they see it as crucial that they understand this space better than their competitors. The UK could – and should – learn from them.
Photo: Austereo, used under licence.
Later this week: we go and see the other Auntie; a multi-language broadcaster in Australia; and, if I write it, a trip to India too.