The Daily Telegraph, Sydney, 16 February 2002.
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HERE
YOU don't need Alan Jones to tell you there's big money flying around in radio at the moment. The whole world, it seems, has fallen in love again with the wireless. Figures released last week in the UK showed that 91 per cent of Brits are now regular radio listeners, compared to 85 per cent of the population back in the mid-1990s. Here in Sydney, experts expect the results of 2002's first radio survey, which wrapped up today but whose results won't be released until next week, to again show a healthy growth in overall listening numbers. And people are listening longer too. At the end of the last survey last year, 78 per cent of Australians in metropolitan areas were tuning into their favourite stations at an average of 19 hours and 43 minutes a week, with commercial stations claiming 10 per cent growth on the previous year. A spokesman for AC Nielsen, the media monitors which conduct the surveys, said that although all modes of mass media saw audience numbers ``spike'' (peak) in the month immediately after September 11, radio was already experiencing a boom with ``quite a significant increase'' throughout the course of 2001. ``We had phenomenal growth in the last year,'' boasts Steve James, head of marketing at FARB (Federation of Australian Radio Broadcasters). ``As of the end of survey late last year, we had growth of one hour and 10 minutes (on average per listener).'' The biggest event in local radio last year, according to James and nearly everyone else, was ``the renewed interest in commercial radio because of the new licenses coming on line''. By the end of its first year on air in Sydney, newcomer Nova 96.9FM was claiming 750,000 new listeners in the tough market. ``Certainly the new Novas (in both Sydney and Melbourne) have launched financially very well,'' says Dean Buchanan, group program director of DMG, Novas British-owned parent company. ``Anecdotally at least, we attracted a lot of listeners back to radio. The medium was placed very much in the spotlight. ``And even with news like Alan Jones's departure to 2GB, again that keeps the spotlight on the medium. We're certainly seeing in all research that radio listening is in a really healthy shape.'' Despite Nova's success, its main competitor in the pop music stakes, Austereo -- which runs both 2Day and Triple M -- last week released better-than-expected half-yearly profit results (a cool $34 million). This despite a drop in advertising revenues. And in such prosperous times, its not surprising to see radio itself splashing so much cash around. Before the start of this survey, the commercial networks spent big on marketing. Their battlefield? The almighty breakfast slot. If you know anything about local radio ratings, then details of Jones's $40 million deal wouldn't have come as too much of a surprise. Jones is the undisputed king of breakfast, attracting double the number of listeners of his closest competitor. But with audience numbers so healthy across the board, even the crumbs of breakfast radio are worth their weight in Kelloggs stocks to everyone else. That's why we're seeing so much of 2Day's Peter Moon and Wendy Harmer on our TV screens at the moment, as well as Triple M's Amanda Keller and Mikey Robbins and Nova's Merrick and Rosso -- each promising their listeners the world, along with lots of cold hard cash. ``It sets you up for the rest of the day,'' James says of breakfast.
