James Cridland

No more Kyle and Jackie O: the effect on radio overall

Vista Radio stations in Kelowna BC

Above: the home of Vista Radio in Kelowna. If you have a city location, promotion like this is literally free; so I’m always surprised when I see radio stations that have hidden themselves, anonymously, into a building somewhere.

A new set of Australian radio figures were published last week. They are the first set of figures that don’t include any of Kyle & Jackie O on KIIS, so they’re an interesting read.

In Sydney, as you might guess, breakfast on KIIS has nose-dived, from an average quarter-hour audience of 91,000 (S3 2025) to just 62,000 (S3 2026). This has led to no end of confident deskjockeys on LinkedIn, claiming that people have just switched the radio off.

That’s actually not the case. Here are all the average quarter-hour numbers - source Gfk/CRA.

Sydney listening

At the bottom, I’ve added them all up. (The GfK diary I looked at a few weeks ago explicitly tells respondents to “record listening to one station only each 15 minutes” and the threshold is 8 minutes anyway, so I think this is statistically valid). You will notice that the total Sydney breakfast radio audience is up by 3% y-on-y. More people listening to the radio, year-on-year. Not less people.

Incidentally, total AQH ought to increase year-on-year: Sydney’s population is growing by about 1.2% every year. But this is an increase of twice that.

In fact, the total AQH for Sydney breakfast, 652,000, is exactly the same as S1 2026, when Kyle Sandilands was peddling his particularly puerile piss-poor prattle. Interesting that KIIS’s audience hasn’t found an obvious natural home elsewhere, though - it’s been spread between the other commercial music stations. Comparing S1 to S3, Triple M is up from 39,000 to 48,000; GOLD is up from 47,000 to 55,000; Smooth is up from 78,000 to 86,000; and NOVA is up from 65,000 to 72,000. In fact, the one station you’d expect to win, 2DAY, has lost audience.

I must admit, I’d not used AQH before (it’s not a number that’s visible in the UK data). It’s quite useful - since, unlike share, it gives you an absolute figure. And it’s directly connected to time spent listening, too. Rather kicking myself for ignoring those numbers.

Another interesting comparison between S1 and S3, in Melbourne: the loss of Kyle & Jackie O has, slightly surprisingly, had no effect at all on the audience numbers. S1 2026, K&J’s last full survey, had an AQH of 37,000; S3 2026 is exactly the same.

Over in Perth, the switch from AM to FM for ABC Radio Perth has given it an increase in share (for survey 3, 6.3 up to 7.1 year-on-year). That’s encouraging; though not the massive jump that had probably been hoped for.

RCS

Classifieds

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Also in Australia, the ACMA has released an update to “how we watch and listen to content”, its annual report. It’s really interesting. The headlines: 64% listen to the radio (per week); 72% listen to a music streaming service; 52% listen to podcasts.

For radio listening (over the last week): 66% listen to the radio. 53% listen to FM radio. 20% listen to AM radio. 11% listen to DAB+. Just 8% listen to radio via the internet. Let’s repeat that, for those not paying attention: just 8% listen to radio via the internet. But when you listen to the radio, the incessant promotion of the iHeart app, or the ABC Listen app, or the Listnr app, would have you assume it’s much more.

These figures are for all Australia; DAB+ is only available within the capital cities.

  • ARN apparently made three people redundant last week. The staffers used to work on the Kyle & Jackie O show, which went off-air in February. (It’s June).

  • At ARN’s annual general meeting earlier this month, ARN announced that they lost $26.4mn of metro and regional revenues due to “advertiser concerns” (aka the actions of the Mad Fudging Witches, who ran a significant campaign against “Vile Kyle”). There were red faces after more than 90% of shareholders voted against the board’s pay package - an unusually high number - and if shareholders do that again next year, all board positions must be put up for re-election. ARN’s share price is currently $0.22; this time last year it was $0.50, and five years ago, $1.64. Its market cap is $67mn, which is slightly more than half a Kyle.

  • My friends at SoundStack are running a webinar on Tues June 23 (2pm ET). The New Sound of Sustaining Public Radio will feature WBGO President & CEO Steven A. Williams, as he walks through how the station made the decision to add programmatic advertising, communicated the change to listeners, and what the revenue results actually look like.

  • Radioland reader Ash sends me this 100% truthful documentary about Australian radio.

  • If your studio equipment is looking a little grubby, I found this cleaning video to help inspire you. I’m sure it’s all legitimate.

  • Having trouble sleeping? I wrote a trip report of my flight from Brisbane to Kelowna and back. It’s almost as long as the trip. Sorry.

Where I am speaking next

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