James Cridland

Time to Kiis goodbye in Brisbane?

Christian O'Connell back when he was on Absolute

The UK’s RAJAR radio figures came out this week. Matt Deegan highlights the “serious warning lights flashing” about young listeners. In twenty years, the time spent listening to the radio for those aged 10-18 has fallen by almost 50%. Meanwhile, Adam Bowie also crunches the numbers, pointing out that Boom Radio (targeted at those aged 60+) has new record figures: audience up 14.5%, and hours up an astonishing 49%. Success with the old; concern with the young - and it’s all looking quite hard to attract younger audiences to listen more.

Now, hold that thought for a second.

On Gold 101.7 in Sydney, the breakfast duo “Jonesy and Amanda” announced that they are moving to afternoon drive. It doesn’t take a genius to guess that this probably means Christian O’Connell’s breakfast show, on Gold 104.3 in Melbourne, will be simulcast into Sydney. O’Connell is a class act - I worked with him in London - and Gold 101.7 already takes an hour of his show, so listeners will be at least partially familiar with what he does.

Gold is owned by ARN, which also owns KIIS - which has simulcast Kyle & Jackie O’s smutty, advertiser-unfriendly Sydney breakfast show into Melbourne. While that has failed - because of the dire, polarising content of Kyle’s show - the technology for networking is now tried and tested, and you can see ARN using it again to bring Christian into a new market.

But - you’ll recall that there’s a problem with young audiences in the UK. You’d assume the same is true in Australia - though we don’t see time-spent-listening in the same way here.

So what about Brisbane?

ARN owns two stations here - KIIS 97.3, and River 94.9, a full-service station licensed for Ipswich, a city that overlaps Brisbane’s transmission area. It doesn’t operate its Gold brand in Brisbane (it used to, with 4KQ, but that often-#1 station was a casualty when ARN bought Grant Broadcasters: ownership rules limit you to only two stations).

On FM, Brisbane has NOVA (“fresh hits and throwbacks”) (10.3% share), B105 (“Brisbane’s #1 hit music station”) (12.2%), KIIS (“Brisbane’s #1 hit music station”) (9.3%), and the ABC’s Triple J (“the best new music from around Australia and the world”) (4.5%).

Younger audiences are deserting radio in terms of time-spent-listening; yet Brisbane has four FMs chasing them - so similar-sounding, two have the same catchphrase on-air!

The only real oldies station in Brisbane is owned by Nine Radio but operated by ACE Radio. It’s called 4BH (“Brisbane’s home of great classic hits”), and it operates on an AM frequency so bad that 4BC switched away from it (details in this slightly over-detailed blog post). It’s mostly voicetracked from Melbourne, but with a breakfast show from Brisbane. And it’s currently the #4 station by share (10.1). Higher than Kiis.

Triple M (13.3%, #1 in this market) is “oldies”, but it’s all rock, and sport, and tradies, and blokes. There’s plenty of space for competition.

Older audiences aren’t deserting radio. They love 4BH so much that they’re willing to tolerate a mostly-voicetracked station on a bad AM frequency. ARN already has a similar format - and the advertisers, but no outlet in Brisbane for them. Its KIIS station is not winning - and it’s unlikely to, assuming Kyle & Jackie O comes here too.

By all accounts, Kyle Sandilands is a notoriously difficult person to manage, and is someone who doesn’t listen to direction. He’s toxic to advertisers, does a show that unashamedly doesn’t welcome in new listeners, and seems not to care about his show being a success. Christian is the polar opposite - someone who wants to succeed, who listens to direction, who works well with advertisers, and is eager for more success in the future.

(Kyle’s co-host, Jackie O, this week announced her retirement from radio in 2034 at the end of her current deal. It’s hard to argue that she cares much, either).

It’s obvious, surely…

Surely, Gold 97.3 in Brisbane is the obvious choice for a format flip. The opportunities for a more female-friendly oldies station here is clearly obvious.

I’m not the only one to think that - I note Mister Brisbane has also suggested this).

Could you take it one further - with networked Christian O’Connell at breakfast, then mornings with Brisbane’s Robin Bailey (one of Kiis breakfast’s team, who’s perfect for the audience and has been on-air here for over twenty years), followed by networked drive?

Calling it “Gold 97.3 4KQ” for the first year would be even more astute - remembering that we’re predominantly a diary-measured market. There are a lot of people in Brisbane who’d be delighted that 4KQ was “back”; and it would immeasurably help with marketing. ARN still owns that brand, you’d assume: it’s still valuable.

(And if the ABC was clever, surely they’d simulcast ABC Radio Brisbane onto FM as soon as they can, as a defensive move?)

RCS

Last week, I was on BBC Radio 4’s Feedback programme (produced by Whistledown), trying to explain why the BBC has turned off BBC Sounds, and also how you can still listen. Here’s the audio:

I also wrote a blog post about how to listen to BBC Radio overseas, which I’ll keep updated. I hope you find it a useful enough guide to reshare.

  • Fun - “Echo Radio”, a piece of installable software that time-delays a stream for you, so you can listen to a radio station in your own local time.

  • Triple J ran a hugely successful Hottest 100 of Australian Songs a few weekends ago. It was one time when I listened to the radio in the evening, curious as to who was #1 (INXS’s Never Tear You Apart). It was simulcast across Triple J, Double J and Triple J Unearthed. Personally, I’d have simulcast it across all three stations, but branded it Double J rather than Triple J - but it was a surprisingly captivating piece of radio. Game Changers Radio has some numbers in it of how popular it was. You’ll find the full chart by searching for it in your music app of choice.

Thank you to Dave Charles of Media Results International for your kind support of this newsletter and my work. With an experienced team, the company focuses on format, content development, sales revenue generation and regulatory issues, and has experience in Canada, Australia, Malaysia, South Africa and other countries.

Want to supercharge your radio show? Here’s a £1 week-long trial of Show Prep - from a world class radio consultant and the best show-prep writer in the UK. Great for UK stations, or for English-language stations everywhere, too. (ad)

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