James Cridland

The first week of Kyle & Jackie O, and new jingles in Sweden

Kyle and Jackie O

The big news in Australia has been Kyle & Jackie O, the country’s biggest radio stars, simulcasting into the Melbourne market.

Here’s the full first show for you. Worth a listen to the first ten minutes perhaps; it takes about 3 minutes 30 for the show to become impossible to broadcast in the UK, the US, and many other places. By 5 minutes 30, you’ll hear the censor bleep go off for the first time (the show is in delay to stop anything bad being broadcast, though, as you’ll hear, it’s a high bar). Here’s a review of the rest of the week.

Had you tuned into the show on TuneIn, you’d have seen the show be called “Jase & Lauren in the Morning” - they were the previous hosts (who are now on NOVA); and because TuneIn is such a good custodian of our industry, they illustrated the show with a picture of Jase & PJ, who left the show three years ago.

The current #1 in Melbourne, Fox 101.9 (which the company rather confusingly calls The Fox, which isn’t what the logo says) has a fancy TV ad highlighting “Melbourne’s biggest party”. The TV ad promotes a fancy big bus with Fox’s logo on the side; Kyle & Jackie O also have a bus for some reason.

Jase & Lauren, who had K&J’s show last year and are now competing on NOVA, were doing a listener event earlier in the week only for K&J’s bus to circle round and round the event. Apparently it isn’t enough that Jase & Lauren lost their show to K&J; they now have to deal with their former employer trying to sabotage their new gig. Pretty poor stuff.

Meanwhile, Christian O’Connell, who is normally #1 in the market on Kyle & Jackie O’s sister station Gold 104.3, is doing a characteristically great thing. “Our company’s taken our entire marketing budget and given it all to Kyle & Jackie O,” Christian says - so they’ve got a rather fine idea: giving away stickers to put on… your bins outside your house. I talk a lot about “making your listener the star”, and this is a great example of that - and rather excellent marketing, since it will ensure that this campaign reaches the suburbs, where people actually live, rather than the centre of the city. My money’s on Christian being #1 at the end of the year.

  • Good news for the ABC in Australia. On the heels of the appointment of Head of Audio Content Ben Latimer (formerly Head of Content of NOVA), and Head of Capital City Radio and Sport, Mike Fitzpatrick (formerly of SCA), the corporation has a new Head of Music, Emily Copeland (formerly of ARN), starting today. I’m a big fan of the ABC: but what’s very clear to me, as a listener, is that things need to change - and fast. New blood, from the faster-moving world of commercial radio, will help. I hope the urgency of the situation is clear to all.

  • A fun clip from mostly po-faced BBC Radio 4, referencing Greg James from top 40 station BBC Radio 1. Brilliant.

  • Mama Mia! Swedish Radio’s P2 (classical) has had some new jingles produced… by none other than ABBA’s Benny Andersson.

  • On my blog this week - Elon Musk, the Australian government, and X: what’s really going on - no, the Australians aren’t trying to censor the internet across the world. Media coverage of the internet is, as ever, a bit poor.

  • Thank you to Steve Austin (not that one, but this one) for his kind support of this newsletter last week.

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Coming up…

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