Radio in pandemic: what happens?
Greetings from sunny Australia. That’s Daisy Dog on the right, with her ball. She’s a good dog.
We’ve just had the results of our first radio survey for a while. I thought it might be interesting to compare the pandemic-unaffected survey 1 (Jan 19 to Feb 29) with the new survey 6 (Jul 26 - Sep 19) - since we’ve something pretty unique in this country.
In Brisbane, where I write this, we’re still affected by the pandemic but not that much - many people have returned, at least part-time, to the office. Shops, cinemas, cafés and other things are open again, if operating at low capacity.
In Melbourne, however, lockdown has been long and severe: with night curfews, no school, and only essential businesses being allowed to operate.
It’s a tale of two markets, and offers a relatively interesting view into the effects of the pandemic on radio listening: two, otherwise identical, surveys.
The differences are stark.
Source: GfK Radio Ratings Survey 1 vs Survey 6 2020,Total Radio, All People 10+, Average Audience, Mon-Fri
In lockdown Melbourne, weekday breakfast is down slightly - but every other daypart is considerably up: with mornings achieving a 36% increase in listeners. Wow. (The latest pandemic numbers were announced in the mornings; but also, with the lack of a commute, people were perhaps up later.)
However, in unaffected Brisbane, there’s virtually no change.
(As a note: Brisbane is rather smaller a market than Melbourne, so the scale is different for both places.)
Source: GfK Radio Ratings Survey 1 vs Survey 6 2020, All People 10+, Market Share, Mon-Sun 5:30am-12Mn.
There were, too, some pretty obvious changes in behaviour in terms of market share. I’ve split the share graph into “news/talk” and “music”: virtually every single music station has dipped dramatically, and every single news service has increased. Interesting, this has happened everywhere.
Obviously part of this is “wanting to know what’s going on”, but it may also be related to the much larger amount of at-home listening, and availability of Spotify, Apple Music and others in that environment.
I’ve been suggesting for a while that intensive music radio’s future is rather less rosy than one with human beings. It’s interesting seeing it so starkly shown.
(For completeness: Triple J has a tent-pole event in January, the Hottest 100, which explains part of its fall; B105 was called Hit 105 in January with a slightly different music policy; 4BC added local programming and significant marketing for survey 8).
Fascinating.
Classifieds:
Decent radio is more than just show and go. A £1 week-long trial of Show Prep will make your show rather better.
Want to get into podcasting? Dave Jackson’s School of Podcasting is the thing. Dave’s a good man, has a sparkling sense of humour, and understands how stuff works.
I get paid by people all over the world, and TransferWise really helps. Proper bank accounts in the countries where you want to get paid; a Mastercard that works everywhere; and cheap currency transfers. This link gives you a fee-free transfer.
I use Sendy to send this mailing list out. It’s like MailChimp, but no monkeying around with high fees (it’s 100x cheaper).
Australians? I heartily recommend Up Bank as your new bank. Give the big-four the heave-ho. Here’s my review.
Three free online lectures about radio, from Gresham College: one focusing on radio from 1920-1948 is online now; the other two coming next year.
Playing music on the radio doesn’t make you special, says Matt Cundill.
In Radio? Are you sure? there’s a nice definition of radio. A really nice one. -cough-
If ’local’ is important, NPR is about to show how it works for podcasting. Great idea.
Radio revolution 40 years on: a nice piece about Brisbane’s Triple M, the first commercial station to make it to FM here.
This is fascinating data from Spotify - whether podcasts compete with music listening or not (and yes, you can include radio in there too). The answer? Nope.
Music, podcasts or radio - which is better, asks Matt Deegan. He may have a horse in this race, but it’s a good read.
Lazy Buggles headlines are slightly more irritating if done by a university newspaper.
Oh, and that’s me done for now.
I’m beginning to be booked for speaking engagements again, which is good - though, less good, they mostly involve shouting at a computer screen at a strange hour of the early morning.