The Art Of the Tweet - Valerie Geller
Updated: 17 May 2012A
T-Shirt slogan said it best: "If you want Me to listen to You, then You have to listen to Me." Twitter (and Facebook, among other social media sites) offers your audience the opportunity to talk back. And when they do, they want and expect to be heard and acknowledged. Talk radio by nature is interactive: taking callers on-air involves listeners. News and talk stations now use questions and comments from Twitter and Facebook, and some programs create a Twitter hashtag to facilitate a live chat after the show or interview. There are three areas where Twitter can be very useful:0 submitted comments - 0 still awaiting moderation.
Branding Your Station: Ideas From John Parikhal
Updated: 15 May 2012Can an establis
hed station be re-branded to get a younger audience? Joint Communications President John Parikhal, who is also a "Beyond Powerful Radio" contributor and partner at digital strategy company MediaFix, has worked with hundreds of media and corporate clients to create or reposition their brands. Clients include recording artists (Bryan Adams), radio (The Drive), TV (VH1), print (Rolling Stone magazine),and publishing (Scholastic). Parikhal is also a partner in the Adrenalin ad agency. Here, he shares some advice on branding with Valerie Geller. Click below to read this insightful article - it's free and unlocked. 1 submitted comments - 0 still awaiting moderation.
The difference between a good and a great voiceover
Updated: 10 May 2012The differen
ce between a good voiceover and a great voiceover is actually a lot less than you might think.When I'm talking with a would-be voice about how to get a start in the industry, I almost always tell them one thing......
Don't just read the script, really get inside the words and 'sell' it.
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The Power of Prep - Valerie Geller's News Talk Edge
Updated: 06 May 2012"If
I had eight hours to chop down a tree, I'd spend six hours sharpening the axe.” – Abraham LincolnSuccessful talk show hosts and on-air personalities recognize the value of show prep. It begins with a vision and a plan. A great chef starts with a clear idea of what will be on the menu, a general wouldn’t go into battle without a strategy, and a surgeon would never go into the operating room without a preliminary work-up.
But in coaching talk show hosts, I've found it surprising how many personalities just show up for work and wait to see what happens. Some days they might get lucky, but for winning over the long haul, show prep is essential. If a talent is prepared, it does not matter if he or she slides in a minute before airtime. A prepared host can still do a great show.
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Choose music with forethought, not as an after thought: Abe Udy on Production
Updated: 03 May 2012Music is
quite often the last thing applied to a commercial, but I wonder if it should be the first.The track selected for an ad is often the final link in the process after casting, recording and editing the voice, but it's the music that really sets the tone and creates the foundation for an ad to 'connect'.
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Are You a Generator or a Reactor? - asks Valerie Geller
Updated: 29 Apr 2012“
It’s not what you say, it’s what they hear.” — Red AuerbachHave you ever noticed that some on-air personalities, while they may be completely professional, are somewhat boring by themselves? But the minute someone else walks into the studio, they seem to come alive and get much better. Some personalities seem more talented when they are performing live in front of an audience. Others are funnier, sharper, and more creative by themselves. It turns out that talent usually falls into one of two categories: generators or reactors.
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Valerie in Vegas: How pictures are transforming radio
Updated: 22 Apr 2012Some 8
0,000 delegates attended this year’s NAB in Las Vegas where the focus was on the digital world. Among them was radioinfo contributor, Valerie Geller.The digital world is a combination of all media. The visual has always been radio’s “weakest” spot. The big argument has been “we’re in radio – our job is theater of the mind.” While this is true, it’s no longer enough. With the Internet we now have the ultimate canvas for multi-media presentation to work with. Online audiences want and expect a multi-sensory, visual component to taking in their information and entertainment.
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The ‘good old days’ are gone.
Updated: 16 Apr 2012The days
of having a week to script, plan, voice and produce an ad.The days of being able to direct a voice in the booth and spend 2 hours on one job.
The days of boozy long client lunches, with writers and producers being treated like royalty.
Yep, gone are the good old days.
Actually, I’m not sure they ever really existed!
Radio, more than most other media, has always had the ability to react and create content instantly. But in my experience, deadlines have tightened dramatically over the last few years.
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How to get past the gatekeeper to your next job in radio
Updated: 16 Apr 2012If you’v
e ever wondered who looks at, and what they do with, your precious CV when you apply for a job at one of the big networks, here’s a peek into the Human Resources Managers’ office. radioinfo gets the low down from the HR Bosses at SCA, dmg and ARN as to how to present a CV that will at least help you get past the preliminary reject bin and into the ‘maybe’ pile.To keep them honest, our U.S. contributor, Valerie Geller speaks with the HR boss of a major American network who, under the cloak of strict anonymity, spills the beans on some of the practices over there. One thing they all agree on is that you should keep your resume brief.
ARN’s Belinda Cole looks for a “Summarised CV – no longer than 3 pages if possible – so many come in and they are 10+ pages long!” Ditto for Southern Cross Austereo’s, Jarrad Nairne (pictured) who puts it this way, “Your career history may be amazing but if you are the 247th cv being looked at for this position, you may get missed if your cv looks like a novel.” And dmg's Kirsten Gillespie says, "Being time poor, when I need to cut through a hundred CVs, it’s really about giving a snapshot in the front page of your CV and then expanding upon that."
Due to popular demand the rest of this story is now unlocked...
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Is the 'exclusive' news story more style than substance?
Updated: 16 Apr 2012Even if you live in WA, you would have been unlikely to miss news of last Friday’s incident on the Sydney Harbour Bridge when separated father of three, Mick Fox, 38, staged a one man protest in the hope of getting the authorities to provide more assistance to kids from broken homes. An estimated 60,000 motorists were delayed in the traffic chaos that the protest caused. With the story unfolding from before 6 am every breakfast producer in town was scrambling to get that all important ‘exclusive.’
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While Radio listening is increasing, its revenue share isn’t. Why?
Updated: 16 Apr 2012As far back as anyone can remember, at least since television began in 1956, Radio’s share of the national advertising dollar has languished at around 7%. Over 50 years, successive regimes of industry peak bodies have argued, harangued and cajoled those who buy advertising about Radio’s unique qualities - intimacy, portability and affordability among others – but have failed to nudge the medium’s revenue share into the eights.
At last Friday’s industry conference Austereo’s plain talking chairman, Peter Harvie, like Shakespeare’s Henry V, summoned the troops, “Once more unto the breach” to fight the good fight and get Radio’s share up to 8%. Can it be done?
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10 ways to ruin a radio or TV voiceover
Updated: 10 Apr 2012This week we are joined by a new contributor, Abe Udy, principal of Abe's Audio, one of Australia's leading sound production studios. As you may have guessed, he'll be writing about commercial and imaging production.There are many ways to ruin a perfectly good radio or TV voiceover. Here are just 10.
1. Cram as many words as you can in to the script. Then add some more.
2. Include multiple points of contact, ie a website (with all the w's), phone number and physical address, all at the tail end of the script.
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Guest Tips With Geller
Updated: 01 Apr 2012Have you ev
er had a nervous guest in studio—or one that went on and on—you could feel your listeners leaving? Whenever you turn your microphone over to another person, even just for a few minutes, it’s a potential “exit” point for your audience if it gets boring. The rules of Powerful Radio are: Tell the truth, make it matter and never be boring. That’s where some “guest coaching" may come in handy. You might consider this for paid programming hosts as well. If someone offers something of value, an experience to share or specific knowledge for your audience but is obviously not a professional speaker, some coaching of your guest may be in order. The Powerful Radio Principles apply to guests, as they do for everything that comes out of the speaker.
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The basics of how to conduct a good interview: Valerie Geller
Updated: 25 Mar 2012Focus
groups show audiences respond when an interview sounds like “real people talking,” but zone out when what is on the air sounds fake or manufactured. The goal: To create an interview that sounds like a real conversation. Most paid programming hosts take calls, have guests, and do interviews. That’s why this week’s NewsTalk Edge focuses on Interview Techniques & Guest Tips excerpted from “Beyond Powerful Radio”—which may prove useful across the board, for broadcasters or any form of communication.0 submitted comments - 0 still awaiting moderation.
Talent On Loan From God...? Valerie Geller on Talk Radio
Updated: 18 Mar 2012
Programming WABC New York gave me a ringside seat to Rush in his early days. We were the flagship station for the Rush Limbaugh Show. At that time, Rush did a two-hour live local show in New York, followed by his two-hour national show. Later, he merged both shows into a three hour daily national program. Rush was a hardworking genuine talent - as he puts it, "on loan from God." At that time, using that talent, Rush led the way for Talk radio to become the top format in the United States. Just as Rush Limbaugh changed the landscape of talk radio and may have been responsible for resurrecting AM radio in the US in the 1990s, Rush is once again the canary in the coal mine, serving as a metaphor for self-reflection by our entire industry.
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Never lose a listener – a how to guide by Valerie Geller
Updated: 11 Mar 2012Whether you bro
adcast or podcast your show, you already know—radio isn’t just “radio.” Your audience gets their entertainment, news, and information, “radio,” on many platforms. Since there’s a lot of “noise” out there, and a lot of competition for the time and attention of your listeners, what comes out of the speaker (or mobile device) needs to immediately engage, the content must be relevant. We’ve known all along that audiences are fickle, but now there’s proof: according to PPM—listeners have a short attention span. And they’re likely multi-tasking as they listen.So what can you do to grow your audience and keep your listeners listening longer?
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What Do Women (Listeners) Want? - Valerie Geller on programming
Updated: 04 Mar 2012I'm
not naming names, but someone leaked a confidential memo to a station staff that targeted women. It said: “Women like shoes. You need to talk about shoes on the air." “Women’s Talk” or “Women’s News” on radio has been tried time and again, with varying degrees of success. But as stations continue to launch with high hopes of attracting female listeners to the format, they’ve consistently missed the boat. That memo is a perfect one line example of why it hasn’t worked.To program to women, it helps to understand them. What doesn’t work: watching Oprah, or “Sex and The City," then trying to emulate that approach. Copying without understanding why something is effective tends not to work.
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How to get into Talk Radio: Valerie Geller joins radioinfo
Updated: 28 Feb 2012Th
is week we are delighted to welcome international broadcasting consultant Valerie Geller to our team of contributors at radioinfo. Valerie will provide a weekly programming blog focusing on her specialties, news, talk, information and personality. The author of four books, including her latest, Beyond Powerful Radio – A Communicator's Guide to the Internet Age, Valerie is a frequent visitor to Australia, consulting for the ABC and other networks. She has also been a presenter at CRA’s annual Radiofest and is now a tutor with CRA’s recently announced International Program Directors Course run by radioinfo’s Steve Ahern.Valerie says, “Having worked as a consultant/trainer for nearly a decade for ABC radio all over Australia, it's a lot of fun to be a reader and fan of radioinfo.com.au. And now to contribute to it will be an honour."
This week Valerie looks at where the next talk talent might come from. Given that there’s limited of scope in Australia for fresh talent to get a start on air and be given the time to develop, the internet offers new ways to build an audience and gain the attention of a major market PD or CD.
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Why does TV even bother with breakfast?
Updated: 19 Feb 2012Writing in The Sunday Age, Michael Lallo makes the following observation, “Last week in Melbourne, the three breakfast programs - Seven's Sunrise, Nine's Today and ABC News Breakfast - had a combined average viewership of just 220,000. Breakfast radio shows, in comparison, had more than 920,000 listeners, according to the latest Nielsen survey. So why such a battle over so few viewers? Why the trips to Antarctica, New York, London; the novelty antics of the weather presenters? And how come the hosts are feted like celebrities?”
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Would you buy a news story from a radio station?
Updated: 12 Feb 2012According to the 2012 Edelman Australian Trust Survey, Radio is the third most trusted media in a four horse race after television and newspapers, but just ahead of magazines. And this in a sector, media, that is already on the nose for most consumers. Only 33% of respondents said that they trusted media in general. And it turns out that Radio is not even the best of this bad bunch, but third. Why is this so?
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As miner digs deep into Fairfax what are the prospects for the radio network?
Updated: 05 Feb 2012The prize for biggest anti-climax of 2011 surely went to the Fairfax Radio sale that never was. The laborious process turned into something of an Arthurian legend with a conga line of suitors attempting to pull the fabled sword from the stone. As we now know, none succeeded. Not even the mighty hero universally tipped to be most likely, MRN owner John Singleton, could come up with the readies to wrest the jewel encrusted network from the grip of the troubled, yet still potent, Fairfax empire.
But winners never quit and what was clear from Fairfax’s formal announcement to the ASX last October that it had withdrawn it’s radio assets from sale, was that that was not going to be the end of the matter. Not by a long chalk. Singo hadn’t been defeated, he’d just been left with the same problems he had before he took a tilt at Fairfax Radio. To build any sort of real value into Maquarie Radio Network, he still needs a successful sister station in Melbourne for Sydney’s 2GB. MTR isn’t going to be that station anytime soon. Taking over 3AW is still his best bet. Or is it?
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13 tips to keep and grow your audience by Valerie Geller
Updated: 29 Jan 2012This KEY issue is a qu
estion I am asked, all over our planet. And the answers for keeping your audience, and getting them to listen longer, are pretty similar all everywhere on earth, whether I'm working with DJs, news reporters, talk hosts or producers in in the United States, Canada, England, Australia, Europe and Africa. The answer is: NEVER BE BORING. To Create Powerful Radio: Your content must be relevant. If your listener is not engaged, or bored, it's the kiss of death, he or she either "zones out" or TUNES out. When that happens, your listeners either leave the station mentally, or tune out physically, their attention goes elsewhere. One clue is to try to avoid "manufactured topics for air..." Always ask yourself: If you would not talk about this subject OFF air, WHY are you talking about this on your show?
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World Radio Day
Updated: 22 Jan 2012Radio finally has a 'day.' Women have one, so do children. There's a world no tobacco day, an international day of peace and of course world environment day. So what will World Radio Day mean to this industry? What is it worth it to be recognised by the UN in its calendar of special world days?
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Working and living in an industry that never sleeps
Updated: 16 Jan 2012Work-life balance has been a recurring theme in the twenty first century. For a while “life” seemed to be making a come back. But more recently, with all pervading technology in its arsenal, “work” is fighting back. The latest view in the U.S. is that bosses are increasingly using text messages and email to contact staff after hours as a way to extend the working day without paying overtime. Employee groups are calling for new rules that limit such contact once the employee has gone home. They are also suggesting that employees routinely put automated “out of office” messages on their email as soon as they leave the office to block any unwanted intrusions on their leisure time. Should such a practice apply to Radio?
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Radio Surveys start again this week
Updated: 15 Jan 2012Are the holidays over already. Seems like just the other day that shops were playing Christmas music, and now here we are in the first week of the 2012 survey period. You would know that if you have checked out our new radio industry calendar (find it on the top menu bar). What rises and falls will the survey rollercoaster bring this year? You can speculate here on this week's blog.
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What's the future for Music quotas on Radio?
Updated: 18 Dec 2011The Convergence Review Committee Interim Report released this week wasn’t timid in recommending changes to bring media regulation into the 21st century. Although much of the focus was on changing the rules for Television and Newspapers while making some for the Internet, some of the implications for Radio are interesting, to say the least. One is the recommendation to eliminate broadcast licence fees. While not so much a windfall for Radio as it is for TV, the implication is that in the future broadcast spectrum will not have any more value than an online server, or some other platform yet to be invented. It is as if land prices will plummet because we will all have the ability to build houses in space.
The other interesting suggestion is, in the longer term, to drop Australian content quotas in terms of air-time, in favour of providing more funding to create local content. Presumably, the more foreign content you broadcast, the more money you’ll have to put towards Australian productions. What’s more, foreign producers will have to pay in to a local production fund if they want to do business here. The outcome should be that the more funding that’s available, the more high quality local content will be produced – content that media will want to broadcast, both here and overseas.
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What influence do non-listeners have on your station?
Updated: 12 Dec 2011Both the Kyle Sandilands and Alan Jones stories still seem to have plenty of legs in the media. And as those stories play out, new intriguing questions emerge about the future of radio programming and management of its personalities. Till recently, a station’s listeners have always been king. But with the events of recent weeks, it seems that non-listeners are gaining a fair degree of clout. How can this be?
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Youth not standing up to be counted in traditional surveys
Updated: 04 Dec 2011Nielsen Media ditched the Hobart survey last week ostensibly because they couldn't get enough young people to cooperate in filling in diaries. Yet, not so long ago stations targeting 40+ demographics were complaining that young people who received diaries, over-keen on seeing their favourite station ‘win,’ were skewing results towards under 40’s or FM stations and away from AM. The times, they are a-changin’.
Could the difficulty in recruiting youth for traditional surveys be contributing to the resurgence of AM radio in recent years?
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The penalty for playing the man, not the ball
Updated: 28 Nov 2011It’s been a big week for Radio. It dominated the media thanks to comments made by two of its highest profile megaphones, Kyle Sandilands and Alan Jones. Jones was nailed by ACMA for breaching the industry codes on factual accuracy and for not providing sufficient opportunity for significant viewpoints on a topic. Kyle was nailed in the court of public opinion for his remarks about a journalist who correctly pointed out that his new TV show had tanked. So what’s new? The fact that the advertisers that underpin his employment and personal lifestyle have deserted him in droves. Ray Hadley also got a run this week for his slanging match with climate change advocate Professor Tim Flannery. And who could forget the judgement in late September against arguably Australia’s biggest megaphone Andrew Bolt, nailed by Justice Mordecai Bromberg, for contravening section 18 (c) of the Racial Discrimination Act in two articles published in the Herald Sun in 2009 suggesting that fair skinned aboriginals were unfairly claiming aboriginal status to gain entitlements that should rightly go to their darker skinned cousins.
While the Hadley vs Flannery brawl has yet to draw a penalty, what these incidents have in common is that they have all involved deeply personal and vitriolic attacks on individuals. In football parlance, “they have played the man and not the ball.”
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Is job security a matter of job description?
Updated: 20 Nov 2011SMH columnist Mike Carlton may have left radio but he hasn’t vacated the industry altogether. He still revisits it as a topic for his column. On Saturday he foreshadowed a rash of sackings in the industry before Christmas. History and the results of the last survey of the year on December 13 will likely prove him correct.
As Carlton laments, “All in the name of ratings, bloody ratings, but it's always the on-air talent that cops the blame. Station managers and program executives - many of whom are knaves, fools and poltroons, believe me - survive the carnage.” Read Mike Carlton's column.
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Radio offers no contest to Digital listeners
Updated: 13 Nov 2011As sales of digital radios accelerate, some unintended differences between the two platforms are coming to light. While Digital is superior to both AM and FM in most respects, it lags behind, literally, in one. And that’s time. Fact is: what you hear on a DAB+ device is delayed by several seconds compared to the broadcast you hear on analogue. radioinfo covered the technical details of this phenomenon back in Feb 2010, and discussed how it affects live sports such as cricket where one could be sitting in the stands, watching the action and hearing the commentary on digital radio well after the play. Now radioinfo reader Mark Flanagan suggests that the days of live phone contests on radio are numbered for the same reason.
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Why should other media not have the same standards enforced on them as Radio?
Updated: 06 Nov 2011It’s a good question and one that has been asked many times before. This time by Greens leader, Senator Bob Brown who argues that, “With the move of newspapers into the digital age it is not logical that broadcast proprietors must be licensed and subject to a suitability test when print proprietors are not.” On the surface, this might sound like something that stations and those of their presenters with a conservative bent might agree with, despite them and Senator Brown being less than natural allies.
Where they are likely to be at odds is that Senator Brown is looking to introduce more regulations, not less. Albeit not on the broadcast sector – this time. But is Radio’s interest served by having restrictions placed on other media as a way of levelling the playing field?
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How safe an occupation is radio announcing?
Updated: 31 Oct 2011In the Philippines, where three radio presenters have been murdered just this year, it is probably safer to be a crocodile wrestler or a base jumper. Honduras is not much better. 16 journalists, many of them working in radio, have been killed since 2009. Even the USA is a less than healthy place for announcers with 17 coming to grief through foul play since 1978. But while we can’t recall an on-air presenter being ‘rubbed out’ in Australia, the threat is certainly there, especially for those expressing strong opinions over the airwaves.
When asked at the recent CRA Radio Conference whether he took emailed and phone threats seriously, MTR’s Steve Price said, “I took the guy who got arrested outside my house with three automatic weapons in his boot pretty seriously.” Triple M’s Spoonman recalled a crowd of about 40 people, waiting for him with baseball bats outside the studio after he had made some less than flattering remarks about the adherents to a particular religion. Luckily for him, he was alerted by security and was able to leave by another entrance. The crowd eventually dispersed at around 3 am. Earlier this year, 2GB’s Ray Hadley became emotional as he left court having won a case against a stalker.
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Are we the best broadcasters in the world?
Updated: 23 Oct 2011According to Southern Cross Austereo heavyweight, Guy Dobson, yes we are. To put that statement into context, we were discussing the the quality of the sessions at the Radio Conference on the Gold Coast the weekend before last. Don’t get me wrong, it was a slick show. On paper, the topics were good and mostly relevant. The speakers, mostly top notch. Yet no one I talked to came away with the impression that they had been inspired or had learned something new. Toughest room on the planet? Perhaps.
Some of us can remember back to the early 1970s when Hall of Famer Rod Muir pioneered such conferences and brought over a swag of American programmers and sales directors to teach us how to do it. And, by and large, they did. For starters they knew the art of presenting. They were vibrant and animated with the aid of nothing more high tech than a white board and perhaps an overhead projector.
Were they better then? Compared to us, then, yes they were. Compared to now...?
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Should the ACRAs be renamed the SCARs - Southern Cross Austereo Rewards?
Updated: 17 Oct 2011There was a telling moment at Friday’s CRA Conference when Rhys Holleran, Southern Cross Austereo CEO, was asked during a panel session whether the merger had been a success. Mr Holleran, of course, was adamant that it had, and said, “Don’t take my word for it, ask our people.” Then turning to the audience he asked, “Well, has it (been a success) guys?” While a chorus of voices replied in the affirmative, amid muted chuckles, one wag sitting close by suggested that he had heard them answer Mr Holleran with a collective, “Yes boss.”
The following night at the ACRAs, the omnipotence of the newly formed entity was less subtle.
Of the 82 awards handed out on the night, SCA walked away with 42 of them. The next best network, Fairfax managed to bag 11, Grant Broadcasters 6, DMG 5, ACE and Capital just 3 each with the remaining 12 ACRAs split between MRN, ARN, Supernetwork, Prime, Hot Tomato, WIN, Midwest and MCM.
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Regional Radio - a great business or a business backwater?
Updated: 10 Oct 2011Janet Cameron sees value in regional radio. So much so that she has just bought eight stations from Fairfax to add to her family owned network. But just how much profit is there in regional radio these days?
Austereo Southern Cross now owns regional tv stations, metro radio stations and also regional radio stations. It decided there was value in combining regional and metro radio and regional tv together, and has been leveraging across all these platforms to try and squeeze some more dollars out of advertising agencies.
But what of a regional radio network alone. Are agencies interested in regional radio any more? And if they’re not, is there enough ad revenue to be made from the local chemist and butcher shop to keep things going for regional stations into the future.
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Digital’s teething not confined to receivers
Updated: 10 Oct 2011Early adopters of digital radios have not all been overjoyed with their purchase. A story in The Australian last week quoted a disgruntled purchaser as saying, "It just didn't work. The screen would have a song title and an artist tracking through and it wasn't the song that was playing." Also there remain numerous black spots where reception simply disappears. But it seems that digital radio’s teething problems are not confined to consumers. There could be problems in the studio as well.
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Promotions - throw out the old tired ones and come up with something new
Updated: 10 Oct 2011This week's Forum Topic has been suggested by James Foord, who contributed the subject of promotions to our "Suggest a Topic" Forum.
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How good is the music on Australian Radio?
Updated: 03 Oct 2011At the ACRAs of 2002 (then known as the RAWARDS), Sir Bob Geldoff berated Australian Radio for playing "shite." His argument was that the more we play what people already know, the more they say they want songs just like those, and the more shite we play. He says we should challenge the audience with more new releases that are different and confrontational.
At the time, this topic received one of the biggest responses we’ve had on this forum for some time. The majority of respondents were in broad agreement with Sir Bob. Has anything changed? Has the music on Australian Radio improved over the past nine years?
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Is there something missing from the ACRAs?
Updated: 25 Sep 2011
If there is something missing from the ACCRAs, it’s certainly not awards - there are near 90 of them handed out in 33 categories. People aren’t missing either – the event has been sold out for weeks. Glitz and glamour? Plenty of that too, this year sporting a stylish pink flamingo logo, big OS stars, stunning announcers wearing daring gownless evening straps. And that’s just the jocks! If it ain’t broke (apart from the dodgy sound) why fix it? No-one could argue that Joan Warner and her crew haven’t improved the event out of sight over the past decade. Yet, there persists a gnawing feeling that without ABC Radio competing directly with the commercial sector for program awards there is, somehow, a lack of legitimacy. And while we’re at it, why not include community stations? After all, they make some excellent programs too.
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How difficult can talent be?
Updated: 18 Sep 2011It is not advisable to run foul of one’s superiors too often, unless you are indispensable. And no one is indispensable. Ask Charlie Sheen. But is Radio management willing to put up with more from ‘difficult talent’ than their counterparts in Film or Television? Or, indeed, other industries. What does it take to be labeled as ‘difficult talent?’ What, for instance, would it take for a Neil Mitchell or a Kyle Sandilands to be sacked compared to Joe Jock pulling an evening shift on a 4% share?
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Michael Smith takes a big bite out of the hand that feeds him
Updated: 09 Sep 2011If 2UE’s Michael Smith was truly concerned about freedom of speech as he claims, he would have his big interview published in a newspaper or on the internet. But he dare not. Instead, he has chosen to hold his employer to ransom by refusing to agree not to broadcast material on air that could bring a defamation case against Fairfax Radio and affect 2UE’s broadcast license. For more than a week the station’s lawyers have been poring over the material to see if there is any way it could be aired without risk to their client. After all 2UE, like most media, is in the business of breaking news not burying it. It could do with a scoop. But it is not just Fairfax’s legal team that have, after much investigation and discussion, come to the conclusion that the material is too risky to broadcast, News Ltd have rejected it too.
None of this seems to wash with Smith who told The Australian, "This country's pretty screwed up if decent, working people can't turn to a free and open media to have their say." Yes, but the country would also be pretty screwed up, if anybody could make public allegations about someone else, be it Gillard, Abbott or Joe Blow, that could ruin their reputation and career unless it is supported by hard evidence. That’s why we have defamation laws in this country.
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Jones tells the truth that Media Watch can't handle
Updated: 05 Sep 2011For Media Watch there seems no more fertile pasture from which to harvest a story than 2GB broadcaster Alan Jones. Last week it was about Jones’ address to the Rally of No Confidence outside the Federal Parliament. According to MW presenter Jonathan Holmes, Jones had told an untruth. Shock horror! For those who aren’t aware, in addressing the rally, Jones was trying to console the crowd, which was disappointingly sparse, by attributing blame for their lack of numbers to the authorities (read Labor government) who had reportedly stopped a two kilometre long convoy at the ACT border to prevent them from attending. This was, said Jones, “the most disgraceful thing that's ever been done to democracy. The people who come here can't actually get into the precinct to be heard.” The problem, in Holmes eyes at least, was that it was untrue. Untrue in the sense that no one had actually prevented anyone from getting to the Rally. But who cares? Certainly not Alan Jones’ audience. Nor 2GB’s shareholders. Do you?
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Terrestrial radio underestimates internet radio at its peril
Updated: 29 Aug 2011Research recently released by CRA shows that time spent listening to digital radio is well ahead of that listened to on the internet - for now. While DAB+ radio will be in cars soon, it seems that internet radio will be available along with it. According to an article in electronicsfeed.com, “Global sales of automobiles with Internet radio capability are set to rise by a factor of more than 30 during the next eight years, leading a wave of in-vehicle apps that will be integrated into car electronics systems in the coming years.”
But if it’s just a question of ‘platform,’ Australian metro licensed stations are all available on the net too and should, with their localised and relevant programming, continue to dominate against foreign upstarts. Right?
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Is station creative getting worse?
Updated: 21 Aug 2011Is it just me, or does the quality of the creative in station produced ads sound worse than ever? Flicking around the dial, it seems that most stations’ ad breaks are dominated by commercials that do little more than have hyperactive voice overs shout through a list of products and prices. Either that, or they suggest you shop at a particular store simply because they have “a great product range and friendly service.”
It’s particularly annoying on music stations where the ad break coming up to the news goes on forever with ad after local ad all sounding as if they’ve come out of the same boiler room inhabited by cookie cutter copy writers working to a quota rather than a through creative process. It not only inhibits the impact that clients’ ads deserve, it brings down the sound of the whole station.
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What is a ‘Real’ Radio Person anyway?
Updated: 15 Aug 2011If any industry reflects the capitalist ideal of free market forces driving productivity through a natural harmony between bosses and workers, then Commercial Radio should be a shining example. But judging by the response to an article on these pages entitled, ‘Where have all the real radio people gone?’ submitted last week by Darwin PD Phil Brandel, not everyone is singing four-part like The Jersey Boys. Ostensibly Phil was bemoaning the fact that there used to be a sizeable pool of bright-eyed bushy-tailed young radio hopefuls who would be willing to take on an entry level job at a far flung station to learn the craft and diligently work their way to the top. These were Real Radio People (RRP) who would happily work for less pay than a shelf stacker at the local Woolies just to suck up to a Sennheiser. Like the Murray River Cod this prized breed seems all but extinct, its place taken by the ubiquitous and aptly named Carp that expects instant stardom and makes outrageous demands, including a serious wage, offering little in return.
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Do nice guys finish last in Radio?
Updated: 08 Aug 2011Looking through the list of ACRA finalists released last week, among the many awards up for grabs in October is one for Most Popular Station Manager – one each for Country, Provincial and Metro. Somehow this Award seems strangely out of place. Not that there’s anything intrinsically wrong with being popular with staff, but it is the only Award that doesn’t directly recognise excellence in the nominee’s ability to effectively perform their actual job description. By contrast, while on-air staff are expected to be popular with listeners, it is of little consequence to their career whether they get on with their colleagues or not. We have yet to see any station managers’ contract or job description that stipulates ‘popularity.’ ‘Respect’, maybe. ‘Productivity’, definitely. And ‘Results,’ absolutely. But popularity isn’t necessarily going to get you far in this business. Is it?
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Despite 30 years of MTV, video has failed to kill the radio star
Updated: 31 Jul 2011It was 30 years ago today (August 1, 1981) that MTV was launched. The first video clip it famously telecast was the Buggles’ Video Killed The Radio Star. Thought to be a prophetic statement at the time, putting fear into the hearts of Radio Stars everywhere, the title phrase has been used by every hack entertainment writer from Melbourne to Moscow to predict the ‘inevitable’ demise of Radio. The pundits predicted that MTV would shape a new youth culture to which Radio would need to adapt just to stay in the hunt. At the very least Radio would lose its status as the harbinger of new music. For a while it seemed that it might, but 30 years on, the reality is that MTV’s hope of achieving the boast of the Buggles’ lyric was wildly optimistic.
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What will you call Southern Cross Austereo?
Updated: 24 Jul 2011You may recall the old story about the psychiatrist and the proctologist who went into business together and were looking for a simple name that would describe their joint specialties. After rejecting “Nuts and Butts” and “Rears and Queers” they settled on “Odds and Ends.” Given that perhaps some of the greatest creative brains in the industry are employed by the Southern Cross/Austereo omnipotency, it was with great anticipation that we held our collective breath last Thursday as the new name and logo for the recently merged entity was finally released. After months of careful thought, they came up with something nothing short of obvious - Southern Cross Austereo. Perhaps all the creative juices were spent on a new name for their Entertainment Content Solutions (ECS) department which they have cleverly called Flying Emu (where the impossible is made possible). But the corporate name ‘Southern Cross Austereo,’ while being strong and to the point, rolls off the tongue like cotton wool off Velcro. Naturally, people aren’t going to call it that in casual conversation. So, what will they call it. Something just as boring, its acronym SCA? Crosstereo perhaps? Or maybe Socrates. Any suggestions?
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Where would Talk Radio be without newspapers?
Updated: 18 Jul 2011With his boss, Rupert Murdoch, over in Britain battling to save his media empire in the wake of the phone tapping scandals unearthed in that country, News Ltd’s Australian chief John Hartigan used one of his local newspapers, The Australian, to assure readers that what happened in Britain couldn’t possibly happen here. And, therefore, there is no need to hold an inquiry into the media as mooted by the Greens and the Labor Government last week. In the article, which also sought to address criticism of his papers’ political bias, Mr Hartigan played down the influence of his publications suggesting that Seven West Media executive chairman Kerry Stokes wielded far more power than Mr Murdoch and that Talk Radio “reaches out to all parts of the country," moving beyond the relatively small coverage of The Australian. He failed to mention the enormous coverage of News Ltd’s tabloids, but that’s not the topic of this forum.
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Is it right to broadcast a match without the rights?
Updated: 11 Jul 2011It’s been a big week for Queensland. The Reds, defeated the Crusaders to notch up their first ever Super Rugby Premiership. In Rugby League, the Qld State of Origin side ran up their sixth straight series win against a hapless NSW. And indigenous broadcaster 98.9FM (with considerable help from Brisbane’s Courier Mail) stared down the combined might of the NRL, and rights holders 2GB and 4BC to make their own call of the deciding State of Origin game despite not holding any broadcast rights. 24 hours before the big game on Wednesday the Murdoch press ran the headline, “NRL pulls the plug on rebel call,” with NRL director of media John Brady saying about the proposed call, "They wanted to call it off the TV as an actual call. That was not in the spirit of the rights.” While some may ask, “what’s wrong with that?” Others may answer, “a lot!”
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What would Dr Frasier Crane know about Radio? Just ask Kelsey Grammer
Updated: 03 Jul 2011Every year the good folk at CRA grapple with the weighty issue of who to invite as keynote speaker to the annual Radio Conference and Awards. Over the years, they have delivered some of the highest profile celebrities on the planet, including John Cleese, Sir Michael Parkinson, Sir Bob Geldof, Clive James, Barry Humphries, Harry Shearer, Nigel Lythgoe, Buzz Aldrin and Imran Khan. While that list is impressive, the real problem has been finding people with more than a tenuous connection to Radio. Most have listened to Radio and even have relatives who own one. Others have actually worked in Radio, before hitting the big time in movies or television. As a consequence, while these speakers have been entertaining, few have been able to produce any useful insights about Radio to a room full of hardened broadcast professionals. This year’s choice, actor, producer, director, Kelsey Grammer, is another big scalp on the CRA totem pole, as far as big names are concerned. It also adds a new twist to the guest’s Radio credentials – in his television show Frasier, Mr Grammer plays the role of a radio talk show host, psychiatrist, Dr Frasier Crane. That should count for something.
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Is community broadcasting Radio, or just ballroom dancing?
Updated: 27 Jun 2011It is said that most people join a club, be it golf, tennis or dance, for one of three main reasons. Some because they want to improve their game. Others for the social interaction. And some because they want to become president. This aphorism could also apply to community radio. But while many golf clubs are tightly run businesses with highly paid and qualified management, community stations are often run by enthusiastic amateurs. All too often we hear of community stations crippled by in-fighting amongst volunteers. In just the past 10 days alone, two community stations battling this type of problem have been in the news. Is it bad management or just the nature of the beast?
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How far should radio go to promote itself?
Updated: 20 Jun 2011Its hard to tell sometimes whether radio sets trends, follows them or merely reflects and amplifies them. If you have an opinion on that, we’d love to hear it. Most stations use trends in their promotions as a way to tap into the lifestyles of their listeners. But if the worth of a promotion is measured by the amount of external publicity it generates for the station, then arguably two of the world’s most successful in recent times have centered around the modern trend of breast augmentation and the ancient but still popular lifestyle habit of predicting the end of the world.
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Which has better Radio, Sydney or Melbourne?
Updated: 12 Jun 2011The battle for supremacy between Sydney and Melbourne remains, arguably, Australia’s biggest and longest running rivalry. From which has the better food or attracts the better events to which city has better architecture and roads. As former PM, Paul Keating, found out when he famously said, “If you’re not living in Sydney, you’re just camping out,” any disparaging remark about one city to the benefit of the other earns quick and vociferous rebuke from the offended metropolis. Clearly the Melbourne Radio landscape is very different to that of Sydney. In what way is this so?
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It’s only words…
Updated: 05 Jun 2011No pictures, no touch, no smell, no taste – just sound. That’s all that radio has by which to capture the imagination of its audience. And most of that is done with words. Two separate illustrations of the impact that mere words can have when broadcast on radio emerged last week. One from England. One from France.
The one from England concerns the latest instalment of the age old lament that standards are slipping at the BBC as more colloquialisms and downright swear words, are permitted to transmit into unsuspecting proper British households. The other from across The Channel, in France, bemoans the dilution of Gallic culture. In an attempt to stem the tide of Anglo-American products and media seeping in to the consciousness of the good folk who live in the land of Liberté, égalité, fraternité (frivolité), the French government have acted to ban the words ‘Twitter’ and ‘Facebook’ from the airwaves in the hope that they’ll go away.
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How secure is your job in radio?
Updated: 30 May 2011As the celebrations surrounding Austereo veteran Lee Simon for reaching 40 years in radio last week rivaled that afforded a winning contestant on Survivor, it occurred to me that such a milestone may be more difficult to achieve in radio than in many other industries. Apart from careers such as rodeo clown or suicide bomber, most other jobs in, say, banking, health care or teaching seem far more stable than those in radio. Do you feel that way? Or are you relatively comfortable with the level of job security that Radio provides?
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Let’s hope Fairfax Radio is bought by radio people
Updated: 22 May 2011There must have been a wry smile on the faces of one or two people at Fairfax Radio on Friday when the front page of the Sydney Morning Herald’s online edition featured a friendly profile of 2UE’s Drive presenter Paul Murray - Mr Nice Guy of talkback up for a challenge. It was the type of help the struggling radio station could have used much more of from it’s newspaper sister during the three and a half years since Fairfax welcomed it, and the rest of the network, into its media family. But Friday’s story had more to do with attracting buyers than listeners. Needing cash and to focus on it’s troubled core assets, print and online, Fairfax has seen fit to put radio on the auction block as surplus to its needs.
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Big Tobacco fights to keep the brands that help hook kids. Whose side is Talk Radio on?
Updated: 09 May 2011As an editor of radioinfo I try to listen to talk radio on a purely professional level and not get personally embroiled in the argument of the day. I must confess, though, that it is not always easy to resist. Talk radio, after all, is at its most compelling when it fires people up. And sometimes, on some topics it breaks through my defences and sucks me in. When this happens I usually switch to a music station or the classical selection on my iPod, take a deep breath and tell myself that it is only entertainment. I remind myself that as a an industry insider I live by the credo (with apologies to Voltaire), “I may not agree with what you say, but I will defend unto death your right to do anything it takes to win rating points.” Besides, Media Watch does a perfectly adequate job of politically correcting the shock jocks’ errant ways. It doesn’t need me in its act.
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Should Radio pay more for the music they play?
Updated: 02 May 2011For around 40 years it’s been ‘the same old song’ from the Phonographic Performance Company of Australia (PPCA); Radio does not pay enough in performance fees for the artists and record labels it plays. And on May 10, they’ll sing it for a small but important audience in the High Court of Australia in an attempt to persuade it that the current arrangement is unjust under the terms of the Australian Constitution. The ‘current arrangement’ goes back to 1969 when the court ruled that fees paid to PPCA by commercial stations be capped at 1% of total revenue. The ABC, it ruled, would pay half of one cent per head of population.
The PPCA’s central argument is that since it is their product that is the main attraction for music station audiences which in turn attract the advertisers that drive the revenues that have made the stations rich, they should be entitled to a bigger slice of the pie. Should they?
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How hard is Radio on relationships? Has it ruined your marriage?
Updated: 26 Apr 2011While most Australians took advantage of this super long Easter and ANZAC Day weekend, for many in Radio, particularly on air staff, it was business as usual – just as it is at Christmas, New Year and other public holidays. Long and varied hours is part and parcel of a job in Radio. Why do we put up with it? Mainly because we want to. For many, it is their first love – having been in Radio long before they got married. Has it affected yours?
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Radio Revenue in Decline: How do you figure? radioinfo enlists a third umpire.
Updated: 18 Apr 2011The headline in The Australian screamed “Dirty little secret: what the radio industry doesn't want you to know.” The article beneath it called into question the veracity of revenue figures provided by CRA for metro stations for the month of March. Asked by radioinfo whether the headline was a little over the top, the story’s author, Lara Sinclair, distanced herself from it, placing blame on a nameless and un-contactable sub-editor. Pressing on, we asked why she would think that the commercial radio industry would fudge revenue figures. She replied, “I was careful not to speculate as to reasons. Rather the article focused on the discrepancy between the figures.”
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Do Alan Jones and Community Radio make strange bed fellows?
Updated: 14 Apr 2011Darwin’s Territory FM is not your average Community Radio station. For a start, according to station manager Peter Perrin, it commands a 23 per cent share of that city’s audience. While that sort of success is coveted by the Commercial sector and welcomed by the ABC, it doesn’t sit so easily with some of Territory FM’s Community peers. Nor, it seems, does Perrin’s recent decision to broadcast an hour of Alan Jones each weekday. It prompted 2SER FM, Sydney’s Jennifer Lush to call Perrin for an interview in which she accused the Darwin station of being a “commercial wolf in community clothing.” Perrin countered by accusing some community stations of having a “kum ba yah attitude to broadcasting – if it doesn’t appeal to anybody, it’s a good product to put on,” he said.
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Shock... horror. It's a live read ad. But for how much longer?
Updated: 04 Apr 2011Are live reads so dangerous that they need to be made really obvious, or abolished altogether? That's the approach being canvassed by the ACMA in its latest options paper on changes to commercial radio disclosure standards. In our article on it this week one radio manager says live reads are important because, "live reads are different from other ads. Which is why live reads are so effective. For heaven’s sake don’t take that away from us…"
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Bathurst surrenders to Radio reality
Updated: 27 Mar 2011It seems that the last major bastion of true independent “live and local” radio, 2BS Bathurst, has fallen. Like a modern day Custer, Ron Camplin, the veteran owner of 1053 2BS Gold and its FM sister station B-Rock has stood firm against the tide of networking in defiance of the trend that has consumed the rest of the commercial industry in regional markets. Finally in the face of the sudden departures by at least four presenters in quick succession, necessity and pragmatism overtook principle and local listeners are now hearing 2GB’s relay of Ray Hadley and Chris Smith between 9 am and 3 pm broadcasting live from harbour side Pyrmont in Sydney.
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Should community radio be weaned off the public purse?
Updated: 20 Mar 2011Last week the U.S. House of Representatives voted to discontinue funding for National Public Radio (NPR) and around 900 of its affiliate stations. In many ways similar to community radio here in Australia, NPR’s network cannot carry full blown advertising and relies heavily on public donations and sponsorships. Although government funding represents, at most, around 10% of the public radio budget, its supporters fear that losing those funds would deal a body blow to many individual stations.
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Convicted for his conviction. Would you give Hinch your ‘get out of jail free’ card?
Updated: 12 Mar 2011Among broadcasters there has been no greater advocate for free speech than 3AW’s Derryn Hinch. He has demonstrated on several occasions that he is willing to break the law - and suffer the consequences - to stand up for what he believes is right. Of course, Hinch has no mortgage on what constitutes ‘right from wrong.’ Not everyone agrees with his version of it, least of all the Victorian judiciary.
In this latest instance Hinch has been found guilty of breaching suppression orders by divulging the names of two sex offenders at a rally against pedophiles on the steps of the Victorian Parliament in Melbourne. Soon to be sentenced, he faces a fine of up to $60,000 and/or up to five years in jail. Hinch, who is dying of liver cancer and has been given less than a year to live, commented wryly that if jailed, at least he will cheat authorities out of a few years of the sentence.
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Radio's wake up call to phone apps
Updated: 07 Mar 2011While Radio in Australia has so far held its own in the face of an onslaught from online and other new media, latest research from the United States suggests that Radio there may not be faring so well.
An article in The Tennessean points to the annual Country (music) Radio Convention held recently in Nashville where they presented audience survey data indicating that while country listeners remain among radio's most loyal, they are increasingly dividing their attention among a growing array of tech-driven options.
For example, country radio listeners are just as likely to wake up to a clock radio as a smart phone or cell phone alarm. One solution would be for local radio stations to fight back with "wake-up apps" or face a possible loss of listeners for country radio stations' breakfast shows.
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Does Alan Jones make Fox News’ Bill O’Reilly look like a wimp?
Updated: 28 Feb 2011Just before American Football’s Superbowl a few weeks back, the conservative Fox News Network’s conservative in chief, Bill O’Reilly, interviewed his natural enemy the liberal President of the United States, Barack Obama. It made the news even here because O’Reilly, who showed measured respect for the office of the president throughout the 14 minute interview, then dared ask, “Does it disturb you that so many people hate you?” And while that question caused outrage across all but the hard right media in the US, it seemed tame compared to Alan Jones’ interview of PM Julia Gillard on 2GB last Friday. Not since the Kyle Sandilands ‘teenage rape victim incident’ has the Australian press been so outraged at the antics of a radio presenter. Even among Jones’ own spiritual allies at The Daily Telegraph, Peter van Onselen labeled his attitude towards the nation’s leader as “downright rude.”
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Do Aussie artists get a fair shake from Radio?
Updated: 21 Feb 2011We wouldn’t have brought the subject up again – we’ve covered it several times before in this forum – except that it was brought up, again, on the weekend by veteran music promoter Michael Chugg who was delivering a keynote address at Adelaide’s Fuse Festival when he told The Advertiser that “Aussie radio stations were failing to nurture the wealth of talent with which they were presented.”
Is he right?
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Who has the best, and worst job in Radio?
Updated: 13 Feb 2011Whose job do you covet? To what position do you aspire? And what job would you not do even if they paid you… a lot? What’s the best and worst thing about being on air? Would you rather be in General, Sales or Content management? What’s the downside of being a boss? How about production? Do you love it? Do you love your job in Radio Sales, Traffic, Research or Admin? Or would you be just as happy doing a similar job in another industry?
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It’s the biggest deal Australia’s ever seen. But will it be good for Radio?
Updated: 09 Feb 2011When the deal between Southern Cross Media and Austereo goes through, it will create the largest, most powerful Radio network Australia has ever seen. Already, Austereo is the only network with two wholly owned FM stations in all five metro markets, plus joint ventures in Newcastle and Canberra. There’s also the fledgling digital brands of Radar and Barry. SCM owns stations in every other plum market up and down the east coast among its 68 licences.
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Don’t underestimate the value of broadcasting Live
Updated: 30 Jan 2011There was an uproar from listeners in the UK last week as the BBC dropped the radio stream from its excellent iPlayer app, which like our ABC’s equivalent, allows listeners/viewers to time shift programs via the internet. But management was quick to clear up the misunderstanding, assuring its audience that they weren’t dropping Radio, but rather unbundling it from an environment where it doesn’t belong – i.e. alongside television.
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Austereo for Sale
Updated: 24 Jan 2011If control of Austereo moves from Village to another media player in Australia, then the delicate balance of the current media landscape may be shaken. If control goes to a foreign investor or a non-media group, new pressures will come into play at Australia's leading radio company. Is this good or bad for Australian radio? Unlike DMG, whose parent company is in the UK, and ARN, which is owned by Irish and American media companies, Austereo is one of the few radio companies owned by Australians.
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Broadcasting Summit Agenda
Updated: 13 Jan 2011It's going to be a big year for the radio and tv industries, so what do you think should be on the agenda of the Australian Broadcasting Summit in March? With radioinfo playing a key role in the conference this year, there is a chance for you to share your thoughts and questions and have them included in the Summit's content.
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Happy New Year
Updated: 31 Dec 2010We wish all our radioinfo readers a happy New Year. If you have predictions about what the new year will bring for radio, share your thoughts with us here.
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How much is that audience in your survey?
Updated: 12 Dec 2010With the last Nielsen survey of 2010 out this week, the Australian Association of National Advertisers, has once again voiced its concern over the accuracy of the current diary method. The SMH reports, “The association wants to find a better system for measuring radio audiences, instead of the diary method. The wish-list calls for the introduction of digital radio to be accompanied by a new, modern system for measuring audiences."
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Not yet enough money in the bag to buy Fairfax
Updated: 06 Dec 2010Amid wild speculation surrounding the question of who will take over the 2GB Drive shift, soon to be vacated by Jason Morrison, comes another delicious turn of events in that John Singleton’s Macquarie Radio Network is keen to purchase the Fairfax Network. And Fairfax is not disinterested in selling.
First things first: who will be 2GB’s Drive presenter in 2011? Word from our secret sources (no its not Julian Assange) is that two of the names that keep cropping up are the Nine Network’s Ben Fordham, who has plenty of radio experience, and Steve Price who is reported to be lobbying hard to be brought in from the cold of MTR in Melbourne into the warm bosom of the MRN flagship in Sydney. With GB eager to get one back, 2UE's Stuart Bocking has been mentioned in despatches as has Andrew Moore.
But the on-air upheaval that’s gone on between MRN and Fairfax of late would be nothing compared to the seismic shift that would occur in the world of radio should Macquarie acquire the radio assets of Fairfax.
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Will 2011 be an exciting year for radio or what?
Updated: 28 Nov 2010In the past few weeks the industry has seen more change than a $2 shop. For better or worse, one thing’s for sure, radio, particularly in metro markets, will sound very different in 2011 than it did in 2010. Wholesale changes at 2UE will also affect the lineups at 2GB and Triple M who have lost Jason Morrison and Paul Murray to the Fairfax station’s makeover. The Today Network and affiliate stations will never be the same with Hamish and Andy cutting back to just a Friday cameo. While DMG has also made its share of changes in major shifts, the serious bloodletting has been behind the scenes with only Dan Bradley left standing of the old regime in the program department. And even the hitherto sleepy ARN has boldly dumped all four station managers in one day to usher in a new era of central control. Is this a portent for major change from the ground up? In 2011 we will see (actually, without a survey, we can only surmise) whether John Laws can resurrect his once brilliant career. To do it, he’ll have to drag the once brilliant 2SM up with him. In Melbourne it will be interesting to see whether MTR can at least reach the numbers of 3MP, the station it replaced.
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If only our foresight was as good as our hindsight…
Updated: 22 Nov 2010Chatting with any senior radio operator and the topic soon comes around to where the industry is heading in an age when a broadcast licence no longer comes with an app that prints money. If anyone has a clue as to where it might all end up, it’s Austereo CEO Guy Dobson who told us, “Without giving too much of our strategy away, in terms of re-inventing the wheel, we want to be three minutes ahead, not three years. If we got it wrong and we’ve travelled down a path it’s a lot easier to unwind if we haven’t gone too far.”
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The “Craft of Radio” Does it still exist?
Updated: 15 Nov 2010There was a time, before computerised desks, when the only type of studio clock available was analogue - a time when Radio Announcing was considered a “craft.” With little by way of electronic whizz-bangery at one’s (usually) cigarette stained fingertips, one of the few “tricks of the trade” was the felt slip-mat on the turntable, which enabled cueing of a disk. A young announcer would practice timing their intro to each song so that they finished talking just before the vocals began. Telling the time and temperature, seamlessly blending the ads played from banks of cartridges on a carousel as listed on a log typed out the day before was all part of the “craft.”
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Alan Jones, the greatest of all time?
Updated: 07 Nov 2010Last weekend the great and the powerful came to pay homage to one even greater and more powerful than themselves, Alan Jones, on the occasion of his 25th year as a broadcaster. Having topped the Sydney breakfast ratings yet again with a 17.7 per cent share in last week’s Nielsen Ratings, his detractors argue that what that means is that 82.3 per cent of people don’t listen to him. Yet, while it’s true that more people loathe him than love him, more importantly everybody knows of him and those that love him number more than enough to make him number one by a long chalk. And in the world of commercial radio that’s all that counts. For the talent that can deliver the audience and the advertisers that follow, the rewards are immense, ask Kyle Sandilands. But few have the overarching influence, the political clout of an Alan Jones. Of the current crop, Melbourne’s Neil Mitchell is the only one who comes close. Maybe not even close. In the entire history of Australian Radio, has there ever been anyone better?
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Rocks a crock. Easy does it. Or does it?
Updated: 01 Nov 2010Survey 7 has reinforced our notion that people lie to researchers. For some reason otherwise rational human beings seem to believe that someone at the research company actually reads their response to questions about their music preferences and forms an opinion that may brand them for life as a dweeb. Therefore, when asked, most people will say they want to hear more Cold Chisel than admit to being closet fans of the Carpenters. How else can one explain why both Triple M and DMG’s Classic Rock programmers, who research religiously, are pursuing the aging baby boom market that ‘once were hippies’ with Queen, AC/DC and The Stones while Sydney’s 2CH and Melbourne’s Magic are trouncing them with Air Supply, Bread and The Beatles’ gentler catalogue?
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Sound affects function at ACRAs
Updated: 24 Oct 2010By most accounts, the 2010 ACRAs were a huge success. The biggest turnout ever graced the most prestigious mega-venue in Australia as the cream of commercial radio rose to the top. So it pains us to pick a nit, but we’ve heard better sound at a surgical boot makers’ convention than what served up at the ACRAs last Saturday week. It may have been okay up the front for the high and mighty, but up back, where humble folk like us are assigned our seats, the sound was dreadful. The pictures were great. The gigantic cinema format hi-def screens that covered every wall of the Crown Palladium were stunning. If only they had been in sync with the sound, it may have helped us to understand what was being said on stage. But no, watching the screens proved to be counter-productive. Little wonder that many around us gave up on the presentations and started talking amongst themselves prompting some presenters, including Derryn Hinch, to call for, “A bit of sush.”
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Who wants to be an ACRA winner?
Updated: 11 Oct 2010Next Saturday night over 100 Australian Commercial Radio Awards (ACRAs) will be handed out to people in 33 categories. At least three times that number attending the Awards dinner will be disappointed to come away empty handed. But about three times that many again didn’t even make the finalist list from the record thousand+ entries that were received by organisers CRA this year. But what does it mean to actually win an ACRA? Is it Radio’s equivalent of the Oscars, the Logies or Aria Awards? Does it help you get a pay rise or find a better job? Or is it just nice to be recognised by one’s peers?
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How ‘ya gonna keep ‘em down on the farm?
Updated: 05 Oct 2010Ever since anyone can remember, young Radio talent has gotten their start at a regional station. Mostly they come from a capital city market having completed one of the major broadcasting courses that only a million+ metropolis could offer. With boundless ambition, most see their time in the bush as an apprenticeship with the aim of using stations in increasingly bigger markets as mere stepping stones on a career path leading to a gig in a metro, or at least a major provincial station. Yet, despite this established Darwinian ritual that resembles salmon instinctively returning to spawning grounds, Super Network owner, Bill Caralis, is not happy. Having lost five rookie journalists to cap city news rooms over the past three months, is he not entitled to be somewhat miffed, if not downright grumpy?
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What price one’s own convictions?
Updated: 26 Sep 2010The Philippines is a tough place to be if you work in Radio. If you’re not being shot for your own political views – 68 journalists have been murdered in that country since 1992 – you’re being fired for refusing to express those of your employer. After successfully managing RayMN’s dxDC at Davao for 12 years, Maximo Solis is suing his former bosses, alleging that he was removed after defying an order from a network official to regularly criticise then presidential candidate Benigno Aquino III in favor of rival Manny Villar. Happily in Australia, the odd death threat from an overly partisan listener has rarely turned to violence, and no-one has yet has mounted an unfair dismissal case along similar lines to the Solis case.
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Low tech Radio could be the most cost effective weapon in the Afghan war
Updated: 20 Sep 2010The war in Afghanistan is estimated to be costing the American taxpayer about US$3.6 billion per month. Our own government has budgeted for $1.6 billion for this financial year - an estimated $133 million per month - to be part of the conflict. Yet, despite the enormous amounts being spent on high tech weaponry and crack troops, the battle to win the hearts and minds of the Afghan population is being lost to the Taliban. But now the U.S. has begun to deploy what they hope will be 20,000 weapons of mass persuasion. They are simple radios that work on both solar power and by hand-cranking. They cost just $20 each. The all-up cost of the operation including deploying the radios, often by helicopter into remote areas, is a comparatively paltry US$500,000. The idea, AP reports, is to counter the Taliban-sponsored stations — the so called "Mullah Radios" — that operate mainly in the tribal areas along the Pakistani border and broadcast propaganda that helps turn public opinion against foreign troops and the pro-Western Afghan government. Funny how the simplest, lowest tech, things done well can often be the most effective.
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What do you make of this survey?
Updated: 14 Sep 2010Do you find it interesting or boring? Are there any clear trends? Is the Radio landscape shifting? Where do you see stations 12 months from now? Will MTR1377 have hit its straps? Will Classic Rock change its brand once again? Will Austereo persist with Triple M, Sydney? How will they fare without Hamish and Andy? What new formats can we expect to see and from where?
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What’s the most outrageous thing a contestant’s done to win a prize on radio?
Updated: 06 Sep 2010Would you call ‘outrageous’ Gladstone resident Brett Lynch's stunt who this week tattooed the HOT FM logo on his bum along with the names of the breakfast hosts Karina and Mak to win Guns N’ Roses tickets? When the melody’s gone the tattoo will linger on. But while his wife, who didn’t know he’d done it til it was announced on-air, has been a really good sport, she may tire of the joke long after a few years. If that’s not outrageous, how about the infamous 2Day lie detector incident in which a 14 year old disclosed on-air that she had been raped when she was 12?
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Who will replace Hamish and Andy?
Updated: 31 Aug 2010The same question was raised when Martin Malloy called it quits. Altough not in the same ballpark as H&A, they too had incredible penetration in a Drive Shift right across Australia. Happily for Austereo they had Hamish and Andy in the pipeline. But who do they have in the pipeline now that H&A have called it quits for next year - at least as far as a Mon-Fri program is concerned?
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What if you could legislate for FM Radio to be in everyone's phone?
Updated: 25 Aug 2010In a rare alliance, the U.S. Record and Radio industries have banded together to lobby their government to force all manufacturers of smart phones and handheld music devices, such as BlackBerries and iPods, to include FM radio receivers in their products. If approved by congress, terrestrial free to air FM radio would be at the fingertips of anyone who carries one of these ubiquitous devices. Which, at the risk of tautology, means just about everyone, almost all of the time. The benefit for Radio is obvious.
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Does Community Radio deserve more taxpayer funding?
Updated: 16 Aug 2010For those self-interest groups that can afford it, election time is a good time to push one’s own barrow in the hope that one can frighten the government into thinking that the public is going to side with said self-interest group and give their vote to the opposition. Take the current campaign for something called the Alliance of Australian Retailers. Coming in on the coattails of the mining industry’s outrageously effective campaign, the hastily formed AAR is trying to convince voters that 'mum and dad' corner stores will go broke if they are forced to sell cigarettes in plain packaging. The campaign’s main proposition, that plain packaging won’t have the desired effect of reducing smoking anyway, touches on the absurd as it begs the question as to what then are the retailers complaining about? At least, it would be absurd if it was their own money. But the $5 million or so that the campaign is costing is actually coming from the absurdly deep pockets of ‘big tobacco’ – without a word of disclosure, BTW. Which is a side issue you might like to comment on.
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What’s more boring, surveys or elections?
Updated: 10 Aug 2010We guess that if, like surveys, there were eight elections a year you’d want to emigrate to another country – where you could probably claim refugee status on compassionate grounds. Yet, while most pundits predicted that this would be a seriously boring election prior to it being called, it has turned out to be somewhat engaging with more twists and turns than the Nürburgring.
Radio has also been much maligned in recent years for being predictable and boring. The same stations would stay relatively the same. They’d go up a little in one book and go down a little the next. In fact, Nielsen Survey 2, 2008 was characterised in our headline as “peaceful” for the lack of activity. Yet this Survey 5 breaks away from the recent past with some titanic struggles taking place.
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How hard can it be for a station to NOT make a profit?
Updated: 01 Aug 2010How would you characterise the main difference between commercial and community stations? You might say that while one goes all out to make a profit, the other is supposed to go all out not to. Simple enough, you would think. Yet given two news stories last week - first that one in five commercial stations made a loss last year and second that some community stations made too much profit - it seems that some operators are finding it difficult to get the desired result in their respective sectors. Maybe they should consider switching from community to commercial and vice versa.
Last week the ACMA released new draft guidelines for community stations on how not to make a profit. Profit, after all, is unbecoming a not-for-profit organisation.
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Would Commercial Radio be better off without the ABC?
Updated: 26 Jul 2010Ever since the ABC announced its intention to launch a 24 hour TV news channel the Murdoch press have been waging an assault against it. Still struggling to find a new business model to compensate for dwindling newspapers sales in a digital age, a tax payer funded competitor in the news delivery space is not what Rupert needs right now – especially one that also threatens his Sky News brand on the Fox Pay channel, which he also part owns. In yet another article arguing the boss’s case (while criticising the actual launch of ABC News 24) Caroline Overington wrote in the Australian, “Sky's argument is that the ABC fulfils its obligation to keep the community informed with radio.”
What’s that supposed to mean?
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Do Radio programmers know what women really want?
Updated: 22 Jul 2010Data to be released by U.S. based radio programming consultants Alan Burns and Associates shows that one-quarter of all women who listen to Top 40 or AC radio say there’s no radio station in their market that sounds like it really understands them.
CEO Alan Burns commented: "And that leads to erosion in radio usage. Two thirds of the women who say there’s no radio station that 'gets' them are listening to radio less as a result. Either their interests and values have changed, and radio hasn’t kept up -- or radio has changed in ways they don’t appreciate."
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Will Masterchef make mince meat of Radio ad revenue?
Updated: 12 Jul 2010Masterchef has become the ratings phenomenon of the century for television. With individual shows taking up three positions in the top 20 this week, it’s reminiscent of Beatles hits in the top 40 during the 1960’s . The final is tipped to be one of the most watched of all time, up there with Olympics and football grand finals. The fact that big audiences bring in big money from big advertisers is a given – it’s the same for radio. But the really big money doesn’t come from the ad breaks, it comes from the products placed in the show. Product placement reportedly attracts a rate per second that’s three times that of a national ad that’s played just after that fiery Masterchef logo appears to annoy the carp out of us just as we’re about to find out who’s for the chop. And compared to reality shows of the past Masterchef has taken product integration to another level. Can radio compete?
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Finally, ACMA gives Radio a break – for now
Updated: 04 Jul 2010If Media was football and The ACMA the referee, then Radio would be entitled to question the heavy penalty count against it. We have asked that very question, or something like it, on several occasions on this website because Radio seems to be unfairly shackled with a raft of rules and restrictions which do not apply to other media such as Television, Print or Internet. To their credit, The ACMA has been reviewing the Commercial Radio Codes and looks as if they may cut Radio some slack on some of the more onerous local content and ownership rules that were brought in prior to the previous election. But while they deliberate on righting past wrongs as far as those issues are concerned, they have looked to the future by granting fledgling digital stations an exemption (albeit a temporary one) from meeting the 25% Australian music quotas with which their established AM and FM outlets must comply.
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You love working in Radio. But do you like working at your station?
Updated: 27 Jun 2010We all know that Radio is a great industry. Those of us who work in it count ourselves lucky to be involved in something so special. There are plenty who would kill to take our place if we leave. But just because Radio is an exciting field of endeavour, not every workplace is ideal. There are plenty of stories of owners and bosses who exploit the fact that their staff are so committed to the idea of being in Radio that they’ll put up with poor workplace conditions and long hours for low wages. Not so at Austereo, which has managed to rank 24th on BRW’s Best 50 Places to Work list.
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Whither Today if Hamish and Andy walk?
Updated: 21 Jun 2010Rumours and the denials of those rumours by the rumoured parties are highly nuanced and open to interpretation - providingfertile ground for talk shows and newspaper blogs. When a politician amid leadership speculation tells the media that they have no ambition to be the prime minister, it’s odds on that they’d kill for the job. If they then go on to concede that, should his or her colleagues feel that the PM’s job would be the best way in which to serve their party, they may reluctantly take on the solemn burden of high office, then you can bet your house that they have been sounded out and a leadership spill is imminent. On the other hand, if the incumbent furiously denies rumours that his leadership is under threat, then you definitely know that maybe it is. But if the incumbant doesn’t even return the media’s phone calls on the matter, well, then what is one to think?
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Could Radio take a leaf out of the Mining Industry’s book?
Updated: 15 Jun 2010Regardless on which side of the mining ‘super tax’ debate you sit, you have to admit that the mining industry takes no prisoners when its profits are threatened by changes to legislation. Unlike Commercial Radio which is content to write polite submissions, lobbying diligently but quietly behind the scenes, and wouldn’t dream of overtly using its own powerful communication resources to challenge the wisdom of proposed changes in the public arena, Mining takes the fight right up to the government with heavyweight PR and advertising, threatening the PM with political oblivion if he doesn’t change his tune. So vicious are the claims of the big miners you’d be forgiven for thinking that they were running for election against Kevin Rudd along with Tony Abbott. So successful have they been in suggesting to voters that the Australian economy will collapse if the ‘super tax’ becomes law that the Labor government has been forced to counter with its own ad campaign worth $38 million. Yet, on radio, the miners are outspending it at a ratio of close to 2 to 1.
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Caravan of Content: on the road to radio's future
Updated: 10 Jun 2010Australian radio audiences are being treated to a sample of the future of broadcasting with Hamish and Andy's Caravan of Courage.
A multimedia extravaganza, you get the sense traditional radio is just one road. The Caravan of Content makes its own highway - available any time any place via podcast, web, blogs or Digital Radio with pause, playback and time shifting.
The real courage is broadcasters ignoring the old trail. Even caravans have Internet connections these days, their owners have plenty of devices to consume content, and the freedom to go wherever they want on the highway to the future.
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Is Radio boring?
Updated: 30 May 2010There’s always a media expert ready to declare that Radio is dead. Perhaps worse still, they say it’s boring. “It all sounds the same. No one’s willing to take a risk. There’s no spontaneity. Nothing really new,” they say. Are they right? It’s one thing to criticise… point out the problems… quite another to offer solutions. Do you have any?
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Hearing is believing if its on the Radio
Updated: 23 May 2010If you believe Marvin Gaye’s iconic lyric, “believe half of what you see, some or none of what you hear” then you are in the minority according to latest research from Britain’s Ofcom which has found that more people trust the news if they hear it on the radio rather than see it on television. The report found that 66 per cent believe what they hear, compared to 58 per cent trusting the internet and 54 per cent accepting what they see on the television. Why is this so? What makes one medium more trustworthy than another?
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Could Radio get caught in the Newspaper crossfire?
Updated: 17 May 2010If you think that there’s rivalry between the talk stations of Fairfax and the Macquarie Radio Network, it’s nothing compared to the enmity that exists between the Fairfax Press and the News Ltd papers belonging to Rupert Murdoch. Hardly a day goes by without one scribe or another in one camp questioning the journalistic integrity of those in the other. Only recently has that had the potential to have any impact on Radio. While Fairfax, owners of the Sydney Morning Herald and The Age in Melbourne has also owned 2UE, 3AW, 4BC and 6PR since late 2007 it has only been recently that News Ltd has unofficially lined up on the MRN side with the launch of MTR 1377. Given that PD and breakfast presenter Steve Price also writes for the Hearld Sun, and that that paper’s highest profile columnist Andrew Bolt is a major signing for the radio station, it is little wonder that much of the tabloid’s editorial in regards to the fledgling Melbourne talker is positive.
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Have women achieved gender equality in Radio yet?
Updated: 10 May 2010In the UK, the number of women nominated for this week’s Sony Radio Academy Awards, popularly dubbed “The Radio Oscars”, has increased by 50% since last year. How come? Certainly the number of women in Radio in all sorts of jobs – with, perhaps, the exception of technicians - has grown steadily over many years, but 50% in one year? Maybe the available female talent has improved that much since last year. Or are listeners’ tastes changing?
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Would you blow the whistle?
Updated: 02 May 2010Radio got coverage for all the wrong reasons last week. What seemed to be a local case of contest rigging in Perth became headline news across Australia. Normally, that’s good news for Radio. Whether its Kyle Sandilands’ bad taste or Chris Smith’s bad judgement, they and the medium thrive on the publicity. Not so good, though, when out and out dishonesty is involved. Things that go on in the studio or between adults off-air (consenting or otherwise) are all seen to be part of the rich tapestry of entertainment that Radio provides – so long as no listeners are hurt in its making. But rig a contest where rank and file listeners are cheated then the precious bond between a station and its audience, founded on credibility, becomes tarnished. And that won’t do.
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Who is, or was, Radio’s best ever sports commentator?
Updated: 02 May 2010The big news this week was not so much the first round of the AFL season, but the first call for Rex Hunt on Melbourne’s Triple M since he jumped ship from 3AW after 20 years behind their mic, and his replacement Brian Taylor’s first call on AW. That and the passing of legendary race caller Des Hoystead last week reminded us of the enormous importance that sport plays in Radio's programming mix.
Whatever the sport, the truly great callers make us feel that we’re there by painting word pictures that add excitement and emotion to. They’re the ones that carve out a niche for themselves in the hearts and minds of listeners.
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Are retailers serious about selling digital radios?
Updated: 02 May 2010Since July last year we’ve been monitoring the way retailers have been selling digital radios. A quick look around the big electrical stores at the SupaCentre in Moore Park over the weekend revealed that not much has improved since our first report on the subject.
Most manufacturers and CRA will wax lyrical about how the take up of digital radios is going really well and way ahead of expectations. While this may be true, with 72,327 sales to Jan 31, 2010, it begs the question; How much more might it be if retailers put near as much pizzaz into their displays of digital radios as they do into, say, TV screens?
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Are all listeners liars?
Updated: 02 May 2010The program people at dmg, Dean Buchanan, Dan Bradley and the now semi-retired Paul Thompson had almost 100 years of programming experience between them when they decided on the format for vega before its launch less than five years ago. Leaving little to chance, they relied heavily on research – a complex amalgam of focus groups, attitudinal studies and questionnaires - all seeking one simple answer, “What do you want to hear on a new radio station?”
Respondents told them clearly that they wanted a very broad variety of music including lots of album tracks as well as some serious talk. And the programmers at dmg gave it to them in spades. Yet, they did not come. Why not?
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Has the ACMA shut the gate after the horse has bolted?
Updated: 02 May 2010Cash for Comment was the big scandal in 2000 that embroiled radio’s biggest stars, John Laws and Alan Jones. Between them, they were responsible for perhaps four out of five breaches of the Broadcast Standards investigated by ACMA . And Laws has long left the industry. Since then, there has barely been a free lunch left undisclosed on air. Yet ACMA has not rested on its laurels. Here we are a mere decade later and it has just released a ‘research document’ that coupled with an ‘issues paper’ will form the basis of a ‘review’. Now we’re getting somewhere!
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Does the PPCA deserve a larger slice of the Radio revenue pie?
Updated: 02 May 2010You‘ve got to feel a teency bit sorry for the record companies. It was a great business to be in until things started to go sour in the 1960’s with the proliferation of low cost cassette players. The internet almost put the final nail in their coffin as many who wouldn’t dream of stealing from a shop, saw no wrong in downloading the latest song from Napster. Few other manufacturers could have their products so easily cloned. Where once a record contract with one of the majors was virtually the only way for an artist to get a hit song, now any act with minimal equipment and recording software can by-pass the system and reach millions through UTube.
Yet it’s difficult to sympathise with their plight when they have done so little to adapt to change. While the record companies were trying to sue 12 year olds for ripping tunes, it took a computer company, Apple, with some real vision to do for them what they should have done for themselves and set up the elegant download interface everyone knows as iTunes. And right now the radio industry through initiatives such as triple j’s Unearthed, Austereo’s RADAR, dmg’s I Am With the Band and the commercial industry’s New Artists 2 Radio, is introducing more new music than ever.
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Should radio stations start their own record labels?
Updated: 02 May 2010A well considered article in the LA Times caught our attention this week. It suggests that while the old system of selling records through Record Labels who signed and developed new acts and then got air play for them on Radio is well and truly dead, it hasn’t been replaced by anything. Well, yes, there’s the internet and stuff, but nothing substantial. There’s no clear career path for up and coming bands. But Radio may yet hold the key as the music industry moves into a new age of music discovery.
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2010: Better or worse for radio?
Updated: 02 May 2010How was your year in 2009? Will 2010 be better or worse for you and your station? Post your Year in Review thoughts here on radioinfo and make your predictions about the coming year in this week's Blog.
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When fame costs a fortune something's gotta give
Updated: 02 May 2010“This is the most significant change since Nova (969) launched on April 1, 2001,” says dmg’s Group Program Director, Dean Buchanan of his flagship station’s new breakfast team comprising Scott Dooley and Ricki-Lee Coulter alongside the original member, Merrick Watts. “The new breakfast show,” according to Buchanan “will spearhead a complete regeneration for Nova.” Big call! Like many programming decisions of late at dmg, this one will immediately reap dividends by putting dollars back on the bottom line as the talent bill for the new show will no doubt be less than for the one it replaces. Does that mean that dmg is being cheap, clever or just realistic?
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Do we need more women in Radio?
Updated: 02 May 2010It’s been a long time since the glass ceiling’s been mentioned in regards to radio. With some notable exceptions on older skew stations such as 2GB’s Gwen Plum and the ABC’s Margaret Throsby and Geraldine Doogue, there were precious few females on the wireless until 2WS introduced ‘traffic chicks’ in 1978. In those days would-be women newsreaders were routinely told that they did not possess the proper ‘authority’ that only a man could impart. Today women may be found in comparatively prodigious numbers both on air and off in senior management roles. Yet a recent article in The Age by Michael Lallo, suggests that people other than white males are under-represented on the airwaves. And focusing on a slew of recent female departures from stations in Melbourne, Lallo reckons we’re going backwards. Is he right?
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Chaser Julian Morrow rages against the outrage
Updated: 02 May 2010On the day after The Chaser’s now infamous “Make a Wish” sketch was aired on ABC TV earlier this year, the broadcaster received a handful of complaints. By the following week it had received 4300, mostly from people who hadn’t actually seen the show, but had read about it or heard it discussed on talk-back. It was a similar case for Bill Henson’s photos of naked teenagers and Kyle Sandilands’ lie detector stunt and concentration camp jibe. In what The Chaser’s Julian Morrow describes as the “year of outrage at the media,” he used the Andrew Olle Lecture to take aim at the “talk-back jocks,” mentioning Steve Price, Alan Jones and Ray Hadley by name, who thrive on stirring up sentiment and causing such situations to escalate beyond a reasonable perspective.
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While the ACRAs sparkled the Conference seemed flat
Updated: 02 May 2010A straw poll of the people around our table and the tables around us concluded that as ACRAs go, this was a pretty good one. Fresh from his live radio stint filling in for Kyle Sandilands, Australian Idol and Take 40 presenter, Andrew Gunsberg (the artist formerly known as Andy G) seemed energised and eveready to repay CRA for the honour of being invited back for a second year as host with a fast paced and polished performance. But the honour of the best presentation in years went to Merrick and Rosso who masterminded a powerpoint and video display that had the audience in stitches and proved that you can poke good natured fun at the industry and your competitors without being offensive. The only bad word M&R had to say was aimed at the absent Sandilands. And who could blame them, given the torrent of abuse they've copped from Kyle lately?
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Was it Kyle or the lack of Kyle that caused 2Day’s audience exodus?
Updated: 02 May 2010One headline says Kyle’s back, the other says, LabRat will take over his shift. According to the Nielsen survey just released, the 2Day-FM breakfast show lost around 18% of its audience causing a 2.2 fall to a 9.8% share of people 10+ 5:30-9:00 am Mon-Fri. It slid from second to third on the ratings ladder. That sort of seismic shift in share cannot be ignored by management. The question is; did listeners desert Sandilands because of the lie detector stunt? Or did they desert 2Day because Kyle was off air for two weeks? If it’s the former, LabRat’s looking good for the gig. If the latter, Kyle could be in line for a pay rise. No doubt the programming boffins at Austereo have formed their own view on that, but for the moment it seems they're content to take an each way bet, playing good cop to Kyle’s bad by suspending him for four weeks without pay. Is it merely a cooling off period or a chance to test a possible replacement?
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Whose bird brained idea was that?
Updated: 02 May 2010As one of our stories this week reveals, someone is having fun with a new digital radio playlist featuring bird sounds. Who knows how far this format could develop? Perhaps Magpies will be the Hot Current category and bird ballads on a low night time rotation. What songs should be included in the playlist: Radio Birdman? Leonard Cohen's Bird on a Wire? The Beatles Blackbird?
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92.7 Mix FM plays more music than anyone – ever. 200 songs in an hour, but is it good for radio?
Updated: 02 May 2010In an age when most radio promotional ideas are stolen – sorry, subject to “knowledge capture” from the US, its refreshing to see an Australian station come up with something fresh and clean and useful. Even more refreshing is that it’s a regional station belonging to the Macquarie Southern Cross Network often maligned for creating cookie cutter networked shows with an eye more on share price than the listener. Yet its been almost two years since MacBank added the old Southern Cross network to its broadcast behemoth with many predicting the death of localism and spontaneity in the bush. But there’s little doubt that regional stations are still populated by a wealth of creative young talent who seem happy work with less to create more while some of their city counterparts earn fortunes to act boorish.
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Radio United? Almost. Who was there and who wasn’t
Updated: 02 May 2010Outgoing ARN CEO Bob Longwell was there, bright and early in Martin Place, Sydney on a crisp winter’s morn. But his stations WSFM and MIX106.5 were nowhere to be seen. Neither were Sonia and Todd. ARN and their stars Grubby and Dee Dee were a no-show in Melbourne too. ARN stations weren’t part of Radio United in Adelaide either but in Brisbane, 4KQ was at the broadcast – with Gary Clare and Mark Hine and Laurel Edwards was online from London. But The Edge, the old Katoomba license that moved to Penrith, and was bought by ARN which turned it into a dance station was there with its slogan “Live and Sexy”. Now on the digital platform, The Edge which on FM is reputed (without the benefit of a survey) to have an audience bigger than vega’s, is ready to take on Australia.
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No delay at 2Day
Updated: 02 May 2010Taking live calls without a seven second delay is like driving without a seatbelt. Or having unprotected sex with a stranger. Merrick and Rosso found out the hard way in June 2006 when a woman purporting to be a prostitute suddenly named then NSW Treasurer Michael Costa as one of her clients, live on air. The out of court settlement is rumoured to have cost their employer hundreds of thousands of dollars. So why do many FM announcers, like cabbies, consider it as some sort of badge of honour to travel without the simple apparatus that could save their broadcasting lives in the event of the type of emergency that occurred on 2Day when a 14 year old girl was badgered into admitting she had been raped at the age of 12?
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Who makes radio commercials bad?
Updated: 02 May 2010Any agency creative worth their Porsche (or, if they’re in radio their Mazda 3) knows what makes a bad ad - product price lists, multiple selling points, percentage discount offers that are meaningless, detailed addresses and those bloody phone numbers. Even most sales people get it. So why do we still hear ads on air that fall into every trap that serves only to cause the listener to tune out or irritate them enough the to change stations? Who allows it to happen?
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Its one thing to sell the sizzle but at some point you’ve got to deliver steak
Updated: 02 May 2010The way Joan Warner and her crew at CRA have talked up Digital Radio, you’d suspect she could sell sand in the Sahara. Stations have also come to the party with a saturation campaign to drive consumers to retail stores. And it’s there on the shop floor, where product sales are ultimately made, that the whole system often breaks down according Steve Ahern’s excellent story on shopping for digital radios. Apart from a few notable exceptions, radioinfo’s dedicated band of mystery shoppers found sales staff to be less than knowledgeable about the products they were selling. One salesman even told us that the reason they didn’t have any digital radios in stock was that the industry had yet to decide on what format it was going to use.
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Finally! Commercial radio gets a break
Updated: 02 May 2010Last week the Australian Productivity Commission delivered a draft report that concluded that commercial radio was over-regulated. It criticised the overly-legalistic interventionist approach of the regulator, ACMA, and the increasing amount of compliance reporting. The report has recommended a more flexible approach to local content rules and the abolition of regional radio ownership "trigger events." It has also recommended the revision of the cash-for-comment disclosure standards imposed on the radio industry with a view to incorporating them into the normal codes of practice. Many in the industry had only one word to say, “Hallelujah!”
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Why do stations rate differently in different markets?
Updated: 02 May 2010Take Triple M for example. From market to market the programming philosophy is the same, some of their major shows are networked. So why do they rate so well in Brisbane and Adelaide and so poorly in Sydney and Melbourne? The Talk Network brand is soaring in Perth, Adelaide and Melbourne but just drifting in Brisbane and Sydney. Meanwhile, the two vegas seem to take turns in being up and down from survey to survey in their respective markets of Sydney and Melbourne.
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A gorilla loose in Sydney
Updated: 02 May 2010Bill Caralis reckons he's good at picking names. Gorilla is certainly the most 'innovative' name for a digital radio station radioinfo has heard about so far in the roll out of digital radio. What do you think of the name? With a name like that what will be its target audience and what sort of programming will it have?
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Digital Radio’s Quality Quibbles
Updated: 02 May 2010DAB+ = CD sound, right? Not quite, says the man who knows better than most, Colin Crawford, CEO of the UK’s biggest digital radio manufacturer, PURE. In Australia to help launch his company’s brand, he admonished the mob of hacks and dignitaries gathered at the catered function at Sydney’s Museum of Contemporary Art, saying, “We never say CD quality. Rather, we say it is ‘like’ CD quality.” In England, many listeners are complaining that the signal quality from the BBC reaches nowhere near its potential because after a propitious start they have traded the bandwidth required for quality, for quantity. In other words rather than have one station broadcasting in hi-fi, they’ve opted for three or four in low-fi. And it seems that our ABC is about to follow suit.
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Pink the performer sees red over Pink the radio station
Updated: 02 May 2010There’s a certain swagger that goes with winners. And when you’re at the top of your game, like Austereo, perhaps the biggest challenge is to not to appear arrogant. But even this mighty bastion of excellence may have blotted its escutcheon when it launched its new narrow focus digital station, Pink. Born of the Austereo think tank that adroitly turns wild ideas into commercial success, Pink with its three month life span coincides with the mercurial artist’s Australian Tour. Yet, despite their usually meticulous attention to detail, Austereo’s brains trust forgot just one thing; to get permission from record company Sony, promoter Michael Coppell and the performer herself, Pink, who is said to be somewhat miffed.
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Things get nasty between 2Day and Nova breakfast shows
Updated: 02 May 2010If it’s for real, then we doubt that there has ever been a nastier, more personal stoush between rival announcers, than the one that burst onto the airwaves this week between Austereo’s Kyle Sandilands and dmg's Merrick Watts – Kyle admitting that they just don’t get along. It really got vicious when Kyle planted a wedge between the members of the Nova breakfast crew by suggesting to Kate that the two boys were bagging her behind her back. But that’s enough of our pontificating, the only way for you to truly appreciate the veracity of these events is to play the audio from both Nova and 2Day so that you can be the judge.
Original Kyle research comments
Nova pay back comments
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Cash for Comment still a talking point
Updated: 02 May 2010Every Friday morning Cairns Mayor Val Schier spends an hour on air at 4CA to chat with the good burghers within transmitter reach of the studios. “Listeners ring up and ask why their garbage bin is not being emptied and things like that,” says station manager, Steve Hirst. With Cash for Comment boldly set on its front page, The Cairns Post has accused the station of taking money for the Mayor’s hour without disclosing it as a paid advertisement. Hirst flatly denies any connection between the program and her Council’s substantial ad spend on 4CA. Yet the station’s morning host, John McKenzie seemed to connect the dots when he told his listeners that if the “Council had decided to move all its advertising spend across to another commercial radio station, we would not have continued to extend the gesture of the hour for the Mayor. I can assure you that that would not have happened.”
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Novanation’s hot and Koffee’s cool – or is it kool?
Updated: 02 May 2010Everybody’s name was in lights at the dmg launch of their two new digital channels. Literally! Instead of the usual printed name tags, everyone got this little battery operated LED display to stick on their chest, each programmed to show the wearers name in a pull-through animation. How cool is that? And that was just the entrée as assembled media was ushered into the uber-trendy Steel Bar strewn with way cool Apple iPhones, iPods, iMacs and MacBooks to demonstrate how these new channels sound on the platforms for which they were created. Not a digital radio in sight.
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How rude is your radio?
Updated: 02 May 2010Its obvious that special interest groups like The Australian Family Association don’t listen to contemporary FM stations much. If they did they would have complained about explicit content much earlier and much more often than they did and do. It was just last week that the AFA’s Qld president Ken Francis proclaimed that radio stations were being irresponsible. He told Brisbane’s Courier Mail, "There are many parents who are concerned about what is being played on the radio. I really don't understand why those sexually explicit songs need to be played at all." Has Ken got a point?
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Nibbling at the hand that feeds you
Updated: 02 May 2010Nothing the media loves more than a boyish stoush between mature men running multi-million dollar empires. When 2GB/2CH co-owner John Singleton took aim last week at Fairfax, it wasn’t long before that organisation’s Radio boss, Graham Mott responded with some invective of his own. Read whole story. But Singo also had a swipe at Advertising Agencies, saying, “The ad agencies used to be run by young guys who, between smoking pot and snorting coke, would place clients with the stations they listened to.”. This poses two questions.
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Government to raise royalties radio pays to record industry: Member for Cowper
Updated: 02 May 2010“There is increasing speculation the Rudd Government plans to raise the current one per cent cap on fees that regional radio stations pay the record industry for broadcasting music:” says Luke Hartsuyker, (Nat) Federal Member for Cowper. He went on to say, “Radio stations pay these fees for playing ‘protected’ music – most of which is Australian. At the same time stations are also required by the Government regulator to play a certain amount of ‘protected’ music. It would be very unfair if radio stations were regulated to play a certain amount of music and the cap on the cost of playing that music was lifted. An increase in the fees would particularly hurt regional radio stations who are currently struggling from falling revenues and increased government regulation.”
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Radio puts its money where its mouth is as it spends up big on advertising
Updated: 02 May 2010This week saw a number of networks, Austereo, ARN and DMG, snub the economic gloom and take out advertising campaigns. Shame that the beneficiary of this substantial ad spend is television, but feeding your competitors is one of the little ironies of being in the media business. At least it shows that Radio is prepared to practice what it preaches in Commercial Radio Australia's new radio campaign that will saturate Radio. click here to listen.
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Some decisions are right, some wrong and some are just BIG
Updated: 02 May 2010Austereo CEO, Michael Anderson told radioinfo this week, “We might not always make the right decision, but we can’t be accused of not making a decision at all.” Right or wrong, Austereo has made some big decisions of late. Firstly the decision to hire Roy & H.G for Triple M, but allow them to work just Mondays and Fridays – “Unheard of,” bleat many amongst Radio’s establishment. Then the decision to launch their first digital channel, Radar which will feature nothing but new music from unsigned acts. “What, no hits? Radio suicide!” say the pundits. And where is the research for all this? Nowhere.
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Is commercial radio news being dumbed down?
Updated: 02 May 2010This week’s topic came to us from a question suggested by one of our esteemed subscribers, John Simmons who contacted radioinfo after reading our story on the Walkley’s where the ABC landed all the awards for Radio news and current affair. Commercial Radio didn’t get a look in. Simmons wants to know why? “The absence of Commercial Radio winners in the Walkley Awards prompts the question--Why? he wrote. “It might be interesting to canvas the industry for some objective opinions.”
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Laws gone but cash for comment lingers on
Updated: 02 May 2010Although John Laws left 2UE a year ago, he is still costing them money. This week the current management, Fairfax, have agreed to pay $130,000 in penalties having been found guilty by ACMA of “allowing” Laws 13 times to broadcast comments about organisations with which he (not necessarily the station) had a commercial agreement while failing to disclose that fact to his audience. The irony is that Fairfax didn’t even own the station for most of the time that the offences took place. The greater irony is that Laws made more profit from the platform 2UE provided him than 2UE made from Laws. Yet he is not held accountable for his own actions – the station is.
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How relaxed and comfortable are you feeling now?
Updated: 02 May 2010Let’s face it, Radio has never been mistaken for a bastion of job security. But with what is euphemistically called an “economic downturn” well and truly upon us, some have confided to us at info that they are somewhat more concerned about their jobs than usual. Are they justified in their concerns or worrying needlessly?
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Tell Dobbo what he should do to fix Triple M
Updated: 02 May 2010The once proud and iconic Triple M is in deep trouble in the town where it was born, Sydney. And doing only marginally better in Melbourne. Born in 1980, it has hit its lowest ratings – 4.9 in the most recent Nielsen survey - since it clawed its way to market dominance throughout the late ‘80’s and ‘90’s, propelled by talent that included Andrew Denton, Doug Mulray and Club Veg. What’s gone wrong? And how can it be fixed?
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There's no money in being Fair and Balanced
Updated: 02 May 2010When asked what makes for a good talkback host, Fairfax Radio chief, Graham Mott told a radio conference, “They should be right wing.” Mott should know what he’s talking about. His network employs more talkers than any other. Meanwhile at WTKK-FM Boston Jay Severin played a clip of Barrack Obama’s acceptance speech, then told the president-elect to “go screw yourself.” U.S> station managers fend off complaints from moderates about such outrageous behaviour by pointing out that it’s not politics, just money. It’s just entertainment. But who’s being entertained and at what cost?
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ABC uses blunt instrument to axe Radio National programs
Updated: 02 May 2010Who would’ve thought that, as a news story, the axing of the Religion Report on Radio National would have such legs? Would there be as much public outcry had Austereo axed Hamish and Andy? And if Hamish and Andy had said (other than in jest) what Stephen Crittenden said about his employer, would they have just been suspended or summarily dismissed? It may not make you rich, but in uncertain times like these, for many, it must be a more attractive proposition to work in Aunty’s relatively safe and ample bosom than in commercial radio.
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The Radio Conference and the ACRAs – how have they changed?
Updated: 02 May 2010A few years ago the Radio Conference was abuzz with disparate owners from all over Australia hobnobbing it with their city slicker counterparts. In 2008, with the exception of the redoubtable Ron Camplin (2BS/B-Rock, Bathurst), Dave Robertson (4LG/WestFM, Longreach)and Grant Cameron there were no “owners” in sight, just senior executives from corporate entities. Even they were thin on the ground. No M. Anderson or P. Harvie from Austereo. And, predictably, no Caralis. Ooops! I missed one. Guy Dobson was there.
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If the doom don’t get ya, the gloom will. Tough times ahead for commercial radio?
Updated: 02 May 2010The revenue figures for the first quarter (July – Sept) for commercial radio are not great. A national decline of 0.52% over the same period last year. And this is before the financial meltdown of the past few weeks. But if it were not for Perth propping the whole show up with stellar growth as Westralians enrich themselves by digging holes in the ground, the picture would look far more bleak. In Sydney, which is down 5.5%, life has become far more stressful for senior executives. How will Radio fare in this economic climate?
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Everybody wants to rule the ABC
Updated: 02 May 2010Governments, special interest groups and concerned citizens are all keen to influence the ABC in a way they’d never try with the commercial outlets. So concerned is the long established lobby group, Friends of the ABC, about where their ideological mate is heading, that they’ve launched a petition to hand to the ABC board hoping that the intervention will have a positive affect.
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Radio rushing into the multi media future
Updated: 02 May 2010Cameras in studios and pictures on the radio. What's the radio industry coming to? As two of this week's stories indicate, radio is becoming a multi-media medium, not just an audio one.
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They don’t make ‘em like Ron Camplin anymore – and that’s a shame.
Updated: 02 May 2010This week Ron Camplin was presented with a Commercial Radio Lifetime Achievement Award for his 60 years in the industry – he started at 2CH in August 1948. He’s in good company. Others including Paul Thompson, Rod Muir and John Laws have also made outstanding contributions to Radio. But the special ACRA played second fiddle to another award that was presented to Ron by the Lord Mayor of Bathurst for his service to the local community. Ron Camplin may be a great broadcaster but he’s an even greater human being.
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Go for Gold. Your reactions to Olympics radio coverage.
Updated: 02 May 2010Over the next 17 days there will be wall to wall media coverage of yet another Olympic Games. How will it compare with past games coverage? And will we ever get another Ray Hadley blooper tape as good as the one from Athens?
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We’ve been hacked. Have you?
Updated: 02 May 2010It’s the cyberspace equivalent of coming home to find your space has been invaded. Nothing of value taken but you feel violated by an unknown intruder who has “touched” your stuff. It happened to us at radioinfo this week.
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Nasal delivery helps keep station revenues up. But at what cost?
Updated: 02 May 2010Despite the CRA media release that boasts a 5.76% rise in revenue for commercial radio in metro markets, the fact is that many stations outside of Perth are struggling. Nowhere is the pain being felt more than in Sydney where the market as a whole lost ground to the tune of 1.17%. Doesn’t sound much, but given that some stations are still raking it in, others must be losing a poultice.
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Business culture and listener relationships build successful radio stations
Updated: 02 May 2010Paul Thompson tells radioinfo this week that an organisation is most effective culturally when it stands for something beyond its business objectives (see our main story). What do you think are the essential ingredients for a successful radio station?
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Does anybody in Radio do “common courtesy” anymore?
Updated: 02 May 2010In this week’s movements section we noted that: Irish funny man, Ricky Keegan, is heading back to the emerald isle after spending six months on breakfast at SAFM. Ricky at first was effusive with praise telling radioinfo, “Working in New Zealand & Australia has been awesome. Massive thank you to Shane, Guy & Craig from Austereo for giving an Irish man a break ;)” But then with that typical charming sarcasm for which his countrymen are known and loved, he said, “Hello to all the PD's who didn't even reply to my emails or phone calls. It appears common courtesy doesn't exist.” What! No courtesy in Radio, could this be true?
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Commercial radio gets heckled
Updated: 02 May 2010The ever popular Heckler column in the SMH the other day took a swipe at Commercial Radio. Difficult to imagine how or why, yet its author, Sean Woodland started "gently" by writing, “Last week I was involuntarily exposed to commercial radio for the first time in many years. Afterwards, I decided I would sooner voluntarily expose myself to the Ebola virus than tune in again. Wallowing in a pool of sheep's brains while listening to a child learning to play the violin would be a more satisfying experience, and may also have a less damaging long-term impact on my psychology.” Then he got nasty. Read the whole blog.
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Sonia Kruger helps ARN find the courage of their convictions
Updated: 02 May 2010When Sydney’s Daily Telegraph (excellent journal that it is) put the boot into Mix 106.5’s Todd McKenney after he was allegedly found unconscious from a drug overdose in a Sydney park, station management stood by him. It was morally and ethically the right thing to do. Like all of us, McKenney is entitled to the presumption of innocence. But then ARN management went to water when Channel Nine reportedly pulled a $1 million ad schedule, citing a benign sketch that went to air lampooning their news reader Mark Ferguson as the reason. Ethics is one thing, cash is another.
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How good is Australian Radio today?
Updated: 02 May 2010Is Radio, in general, of a better quality today than, say, 10, 20 or 30 years ago? Is it still amongst the very best in the world or have other countries overtaken us? Do new technologies such as internet radio offer more innovative programming? Is traditional Radio too… well, traditional?
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When they turn off the analogue lights, will Radio be the last to leave?
Updated: 02 May 2010It’s official, the switchover to digital TV would be complete by December 31, 2013, federal Communications Minister Stephen Conroy told the Australian Broadcast Summit in Sydney. And to ensure the whole thing goes smoothly and not too much of a financial burden on TV’s cash strapped owners, the government is pitching in $37.9 million. But Senator Conroy told broadcasters that a policy announcement on digital radio was still under discussion, “I'm just not able at the moment to make any announcement about that," he said.
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Once a protected species, are radio sales people heading for extinction?!
Updated: 02 May 2010If there’s such a thing as a protected species at commercial stations, surely it’s sales people. Regardless of the way in which radio is delivered, whether on-line, terrestrial or podcast, while there are ads to be sold, the people who go out and bring in the revenue will always earn the big bucks and management’s plaudits. The business model of a sales team that goes forth into the marketplace and solicits business is as old as Radio itself. But things may be about to change.
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Vilification for the discriminating listener
Updated: 02 May 2010In 2004, John Laws was pilloried and taken to court on a vilification charge for calling “front man” for Queer Eye for the Straight Guy,Carson Kressley, a “little pansy” and a “pillow biter”. This week, Sonja Kruger radio new-chum on the MIX 106 breakfast show, commenting on the latest survey results, told her audience "Now we know the real queen of breakfast radio is Alan Jones."
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Why is Radio so averse to the “C” word?
Updated: 02 May 2010Radio and country music legend Smoky Dawson has died and an era of radio and hillbilly country music has died with him.
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Australia Day heroes in radio?
Updated: 02 May 2010The awards for Australian of the Year will be announced tomorrow and you can get exclusive audio here on radioinfo (see our story in the news section for more info). Do you think there should be any radio people recognised in this year's awards? What about those hardy souls at 4HI and Hot FM Emerald who have been working hard during the floods, or perhaps Werner Muhlethaler who has been trying to hold 2Hot FM together despite the odds (you can read about them in this week's news stories).
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How stressful is Radio?
Updated: 02 May 2010Over recent months, radioinfo has looked more like an obituary column than a Radio news website. Sadly we have lost at least half a dozen of our industry’s finest talent in a relatively short space of time – most of them way too young to have died and in the circumstances in which they did. Could stress be a contributing factor?
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Jim Angel was one of the very best
Updated: 02 May 2010As a young jock in 1973, I thought I had really made the big time when I joined 2KA, Katoomba – a station taking the 2SM network newsfeed – and Jim Angel introduced me with standardised line, “Ahead of more music with Peter Saxon, here’s the weather for the blue mountains…”. Angel was all class, a radio man through and through, and for him to say my name in the same manner reserved for the stars of 2SM, 3XY, 4IP, 5KA and 6IX, filled me with pride and a keen ambition to emulate the professionalism he displayed every time he turned on the microphone.
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Old air-checks? Industry History. Your industry needs you
Updated: 02 May 2010When researching recent stories on the 40th Anniversary of Talkback Radio and the longest on air breakfast teams, the first thing that became apparent is how little archival material exists and how disjointed the records are. So its time for your help. Do you know the longest serving breakfast team or solo announcer in Australian Radio? How long were they on air? Did anyone last longer? And who really started talkback? What was the first program?
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Mates in high places
Updated: 02 May 2010Two weeks ago the papers told us that Alan Jones has no real political influence. This week, with Jones under attack from ACMA, the Prime Minister, John Howard took the extraordinary step of publicly defending Jones – and in effect contradicting his own government’s watchdog – by describing him as an “outstanding broadcaster” and “one who articulates what a lot of people think". While that’s true, it nonetheless skirts the issue at hand as to whether “what they think” - in this case about Muslims - is acceptable on the public airwaves when clearly ACMA has decided it is not.
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If you were Lawsie, would you stay or would you go?
Updated: 02 May 2010Starting with Ray Hadley, there are plenty of people ready to knock John Laws off his ever-diminishing pedestal. The latest to join the queue of Laws bashers is Michael Bodey who, writing in The Australian started his column by stating, “With a ratings decline that appears terminal, 2UE owner Southern Cross Broadcasting must face the hard fact: the one-time king of talkback radio, John Laws, is a liability”. And that was about the nicest thing he had to say about the man who, contrary to Bodey’s assessment, many still regard as the king of radio. Laws’s website says so.
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Media for the individual. It's called radio isn't it?
Updated: 02 May 2010So James Packer reckons media of the future will be much more individualised. Perhaps he has forgotten that radio already is.
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Where would John Cleese be if he wasn’t Cleese?
Updated: 02 May 2010Commercial Radio Australia this week released their latest commercial for commercials in the long running series written by Ralph van Dijk of Eardrum Australia.
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Podcasting
Updated: 02 May 2010Podcasting has become a phenomenal success, almost overnight, for radio. While Austereo’s reporting about 300,000 downloads per month, the ABC’s up to 500,000+ for Radio National alone. No wonder both are busy working on viable business models that will capitalise on this rapidly growing traffic.
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Researching radio - what topics would you choose?
Updated: 02 May 2010This week in Melbourne a group of radio academics and researchers from around the world gathered for the Radio2005 conference. You will read some of the reports of that conference in the radioinfo news pages.
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Click Here to Read or Contribute
Updated: 02 May 2010What’s news worth to radio? Management certainly knows what it costs. For many music stations that three minutes at the top of the hour can cost more than the other 57 combined.
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Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!
Updated: 02 May 2010It’s been said that you’re not really a career broadcaster unless you’ve worked Christmas Day. It’s a Radio rite of passage. Another one of those sacrifices that Radio demands of its tribe. You entertain the masses as they gather ‘round the tree, exchanging presents and goodwill, while your own family patiently wait for Daddy or Mummy to come home.
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Opinions Welcome Here
Updated: 02 May 2010As workplaces go, radio stations can get pretty “lively”. But apparently it got a bit too lively at 3BA soon after Reginald David Mowat, joined their happy little work force in 2000 (see story in news section).
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Where has all the talent gone?
Updated: 02 May 2010This forum is never short of posts bemoaning the diminishing job opportunities in radio since the big networks have taken over all but a few of the old independent “corner store” operators.
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<p>Voice-over talent could be costing radio millions
Updated: 02 May 2010Word is that radio missed out on the first round of the multi-million dollar Medicare campaign because it was felt that the creative used on TV could not be adapted for radio. Having seen the TV ad, ad nauseum, even a hack of a radio copywriter would find this hard to believe – until you look at the last frame which carries the coat of arms and lists all the dozen or so names who participated in that ad.
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Open Slather
Updated: 02 May 2010The president of community broadcaster, FBi, Cassandra Wilkinson, certainly knows how to hold an audience – not just in the Sydney market against astronomically better resourced competitors, but with a confronting address to delegates at the recent ABA conference.
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Hinch and Hookes - was Hinch right?
Updated: 02 May 2010This week Hinch did what Hinch does best, made headlines.
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Open Slather
Updated: 02 May 2010This “cash for comment” thing just won’t go away. Yet another condition has been placed on 2UE’s licence this week, while in Adelaide Leon Byner’s made front page news in The 'Tiser for all the wrong reasons (see the stories in News and Paper Clips). And even though the council has acquitted him and the mayor of any wrong doing, the ABA may have a different interpretation and be less lenient.
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Pick your RADIO DREAM TEAM of the last 80 years
Updated: 02 May 2010In the past 80 years of radio there have been some great presenters in both music and talk formats.
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Send your CHRISTMAS and NEW YEAR GREETING to the radio industry here
Updated: 02 May 2010Forgot to send those Christmas Cards out to your friends in the radio industry all over the country.
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Free For All
Updated: 02 May 2010It’s your Forum, tell us what you think about ANYTHING to do with radio.
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Only In The Movies?
Updated: 02 May 2010radioinfo asked 702ABC boss Roger Summerill whether he was disappointed that the 2UE/2GB merger had been called off. After all, his station might have benefited most from a listener backlash aimed at the other two. He answered, “In my head, Yes. But in my heart, No".
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Your Forum - Your Thoughts to do with Radio
Updated: 02 May 2010Lots to talk about.
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Is Radio the other woman/man in your life?
Updated: 02 May 2010How hard is Radio on relationships? Has it ruined your marriage?
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Your Views On Anything To Do With Radio
Updated: 02 May 2010Its another big news week for Radio.
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What did you think of the Radio Awards?
Updated: 02 May 2010The Commercial Radio Awards have come and gone for another year. The winners are basking in the glory and others are already planning their applications for next year.
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Its Up To You
Updated: 02 May 2010This time its open slather. Choose your own topic.
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When is dismissal unfair?
Updated: 02 May 2010Although it‘s becoming increasingly popular in some industries, suing for unfair dismissal in Radio remains rare. As one wag told us, “In this business, if you haven’t been sacked at least a couple of times in your career, you’re just not trying. In fact, getting sacked from certain stations can be a badge of honour”.
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Is THIS the tackiest piece of radio you’ve ever heard?
Updated: 02 May 2010Forget last week’s Forum topic about “tacky” radio on the Gold Coast. Wrap your ears around this ....
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Is this the “tackiest piece of radio in history”?
Updated: 02 May 2010It is according to at least two anonymous Gold Coast residents who felt strongly enough about it to send us this clip of a September 11 promo from Hot Tomato.
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Carlton and the Price of living on Struggle Street.
Updated: 02 May 2010In a radio interview David Oldfield once said of Pauline Hanson’s followers that if she had kidnapped and murdered their children, they would help her hide the evidence from police. If the same could be said of Alan Jones’ core audience, then they’re going to be hard to shift.
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“Forget Share, Concentrate on Profit”. Good Advice?
Updated: 02 May 2010At Commercial Radio Australia's recent Executive Development Program, Professor Paul Almeida from Georgetown University, told participants they should stop obsessing about bringing in more ad dollars to radio, because it is unlikely to change. Instead, he urged management to devote their energy to making their businesses profitable within the parameters of the 8%-11% of total ad spend for radio.
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Triple M changes - what do you think?
Updated: 02 May 2010As our exclusive interview with him reveals, Triple M’s Group PD Grant Tothill is uber-passionate about radio. (Read the Tothill article – its FREE even to non-subscribers.)
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The ABC. Which Cut Should Be Deepest?
Updated: 02 May 2010The ABC has just cut $200,000 from radio and much more from its other divisions. While losing TV programs like Behind the News, it is developing a new show with Amanda Keller.
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Who IN RADIO makes you proud to be Australian?
Updated: 02 May 2010Nominations are under way for Australian of the Year. Who would be a worthy entrant from the Radio Industry? dmg's Paul Thompson, Austereo's Peter Harvie, RG Cap's Rhys Holleran? ABC's Michael Mason or Roger Summerill? Super's Bill Caralis?
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Will Free Trade Kill Off Oz Music?
Updated: 02 May 2010Australia is closer than ever to signing an historic free trade agreement with the US. Theoretically it means a more level playing field in the world's biggest market for our farmers, resource sectors and other exporters.
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Forum Q&A with Joan Warner
Updated: 02 May 2010This week we’re going to do something a little different with the Forum. The CEO of Commercial Radio Australia, Joan Warner, has kindly agreed to answer radioinfo’s subscribers’ questions. Where’s radio heading? How’s the new campaign going? What about digital? Are we ever going to lose the diary system? How hard is it to keep the peace between Radio’s warring tribes? Will Peter Berner host the Radio Awards again this year?
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What do you think of commercial radio’s new campaign?
Updated: 02 May 2010It was only three weeks ago that our Forum topic asked, why isn’t Radio advertising to attract advertisers? And within two weeks Commercial Radio Australia responded with a $20 million dollar campaign to do just that! We’d like you to think that it was in response to the constructive and intelligent arguments posted by radioinfo contributors. But in fact it was sheer coincidence. The campaign had been on the drawing board for months and built on a considerable amount of research.
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What’s the quickest way into cap city radio?
Updated: 02 May 2010John Laws started in bush radio and worked his way into the city. Alan Jones didn't. He was a political speech writer and rugby coach. Ray Hadley was a sports mad cab driver. Both walked straight into city positions – as have a few newspaper journalists. Meanwhile, on FM, the big breakfast salaries seem to go to stand-up comedians.
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Can JJJ reinvent itself, or should it just grow old gracefully?
Updated: 02 May 2010Its charter is to be the ABC’s youth network. But it’s getting creamed by NOVA and both Austereo streams. In Melbourne, even Gold rates higher in 10-17s; while in Sydney MIX beats it in 18–24s.
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DOES ADVERTISING FOR ADVERTISING WORK?
Updated: 02 May 2010Television has a campaign running right now. Radio does it every now and again too. Remember the "radio is word of mouth" campaign a few years ago? Why did it stop?
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What do you like most about going to work? What don’t you like?
Updated: 02 May 2010Simple question. Only two rules.
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Whose ABC is it anyway?
Updated: 02 May 2010Never has the phrase, "truth is the first casualty of war" been given such meaning as during the Iraqi conflict and now its aftermath. With so much media pedalling so many competing truths, which "truth" can we rely on? The "truth", it seems, is merely a "position" one takes. And then one chooses the news media that best reflects it. Surely then, "Bias" can't actually exist other than as a perception relative to one’s own personal "truth". Those who agree with me are balanced. Those who disagree are biased. On that basis, can any news organisation claim to be un-biased?
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Is radio a good investment?
Updated: 02 May 2010Do you own shares in radio? How have they performed compared to other stock in your portfolio? Is it a good business to be in compared to, say, waste management?
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Blame It On The Boss Of NOVA?
Updated: 02 May 2010Staff at Melbourne’s NOVA couldn’t believe their luck last week when a FOX listener database accidentally landed in their laps. Rather than inform FOX of their mistake, NOVA sent an email to everyone on the list encouraging them to switch by demonstrating how they played more music than FOX.
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What type of animal is a Radio Person?
Updated: 02 May 2010After dumping senior management at 3AK/3MP last week, new interim boss, Peter Quattro, said, "You have to have radio people running radio stations".
11 submitted comments - 0 still awaiting moderation.
Let Stalk About Sex Baby...
Updated: 02 May 2010It started sometime back in the late 60s or early 70s. As Radio Announcers became Disc Jockeys and later Jocks and Jockettes, standards in speech began to decline and the double entendre became de rigeur.
30 submitted comments - 0 still awaiting moderation.
Do We Need More Radio Stations?
Updated: 02 May 2010dmg says YES! Austereo, ARN and others say NO! The ABA says HUH? Maybe.
42 submitted comments - 0 still awaiting moderation.
Ratings – in or out?
Updated: 02 May 2010Because of the decision to reappoint Nielsen, 2SM has informed Commercial Radio Australia that it will no longer participate in the Sydney Audience Research Survey (see this week’s news item). The station will instead conduct its own "independent audience research."
15 submitted comments - 0 still awaiting moderation.
Who helped you up the ladder?
Updated: 02 May 2010This topic was suggested by our most prolific contributor - Anonymous User.
30 submitted comments - 0 still awaiting moderation.
How High Should The Aussie Music Quota Go??
Updated: 02 May 2010Since the days of Johhny O'Keefe the record companies have complained to stations about lack of air-play for Australian artists. And radio has bemoaned the lack of quality - especially for non-CHR formats.
19 submitted comments - 0 still awaiting moderation.
Are Show Prep Services Making Jocks Lazy?
Updated: 02 May 2010The following topic was submitted by Peter Whiting.
16 submitted comments - 0 still awaiting moderation.
Radio's Industry Think Tank - who would you like to hear?
Updated: 02 May 2010Commercial Radio Australia continues to evolve the annual three day Radio Fest in October. This year, to be held in Sydney, the industry seminar on Friday will offer a range of workshops to interest people working in most facets of radio including:
10 submitted comments - 0 still awaiting moderation.
What is all this digital stuff - and why does it matter?
Updated: 02 May 2010Internet radio? Digital Radio? Is it the future or just a waste of time and money?
13 submitted comments - 0 still awaiting moderation.
Forum topics - your suggestions
Updated: 02 May 2010Would you like to see a topic discussed on this forum?
9 submitted comments - 0 still awaiting moderation.
How Do You Get A Job In Radio?
Updated: 02 May 2010There’s been plenty of talk on this forum about dwindling job vacancies and how tough it is to break into radio. Yet by the time this year’s class at AFTRS graduate, many will already have jobs to go to.
43 submitted comments - 0 still awaiting moderation.
How Long's a Piece of Copy?
Updated: 02 May 2010While 30 second ads are the standard in Australia, in the U.S. 60s are more the go. You get far more time to engage the audience through entertaining creative and set the mood for the sales pitch. But it also helps that 60s cost only a fraction more than 30s in the U.S.
19 submitted comments - 0 still awaiting moderation.
How good is the music?
Updated: 02 May 2010At last years' rAWARDS, Sir Bob Geldoff berated Australian radio for playing "shite". With playlists dominated by girl bands and boy bands is radio in danger of replicating the vacuous bubble gum era of the early 70s? Or have we surpassed it already?
21 submitted comments - 0 still awaiting moderation.
Zemanek returns to 2UE
Updated: 02 May 2010Will Stan rekindle the flames of success now that he is back on 2UE?
29 submitted comments - 0 still awaiting moderation.
Is Radio part of the anti-terrorist solution or part of the problem?
Updated: 02 May 2010Multicultural Affairs Minister Gary Hardgrave has written to Ethnic Broadcasters reminding them of their "responsibilities" in covering the hot issues of terrorism, refugees and ethnic minorities. (Read his letter in the NEWS section)
4 submitted comments - 0 still awaiting moderation.
The New Talk - How's It Gonna Sound?
Updated: 02 May 2010There’s been a groundswell of talk lately about the new, younger, lighter and funnier talk format that eschews the blue rinse set in their 70s and targets baby boomers (45 – 60ish)who have become less musical and more political as they grow older. In the US they call it FM Talk.
29 submitted comments - 0 still awaiting moderation.
What do you predict for 2003?
Updated: 02 May 2010Will there be more jobs or more jobs go at your station?
34 submitted comments - 0 still awaiting moderation.
Christmas and New Year wishes
Updated: 02 May 2010You forgot to send someone in radio a Christmas card didn't you?
20 submitted comments - 0 still awaiting moderation.
Radio Research - is enough enough?
Updated: 02 May 2010Is too much research not enough? Is radio researching itself into blandness? Are program directors reading the results properly? Is there a tendency within the research industry to tell their clients what they want to hear?
7 submitted comments - 0 still awaiting moderation.
Creative, Sales and Other Things
Updated: 02 May 2010Is the quality of ads from in-house creative teams as good as it should be? Why do we hear ordinary ads on radio?
7 submitted comments - 0 still awaiting moderation.
How much can a shock jock shock?
Updated: 02 May 2010Can talk presenters really exert undue influence over their listeners? Or do people merely choose the presenter that reflects their own preconceived ideas and prejudices?
8 submitted comments - 0 still awaiting moderation.
Automation. Is it good for radio?
Updated: 02 May 2010Is Automation good for radio?
29 submitted comments - 0 still awaiting moderation.
Electronic ratings - your view.
Updated: 02 May 2010If diaries are dumped in favour of a new electronic system of audience measurement, will it help increase radio's share of advertising revenue?
4 submitted comments - 0 still awaiting moderation.
Are salaries over-inflated?
Updated: 02 May 2010Are star salaries - and senior exec salaries - in radio over-inflated? While everyone else at the station beavers away on a pittance, a handful of people earn megabucks. Is this fair or fair enough? Are you overworked and underpaid or the other way around?
15 submitted comments - 0 still awaiting moderation.
Commercial Radio Awards
Updated: 02 May 2010Another Radio Award night has come and gone. It's the big night out for the radio industry - or at least for those lucky enough to have their boss pay the expenses. Was it good for you? Did the earth move? Is it better now compared to previous years? What's your suggestion on how it could be improved?
16 submitted comments - 0 still awaiting moderation.
What ever happened to...
Updated: 02 May 2010If you've lost track of your past radio buddies, leave a message and hopefully someone reading will know where they are now, and how to put you back in contact.
11 submitted comments - 0 still awaiting moderation.
ABC Radio hunts for more listeners
Updated: 26 Apr 2010The BBC’s Radio 1 has more in common with commercial outfits like 2Day than with the ABC’s triple j. But the really big difference between Aunty and The Beeb is that the BBC accounts for more than 50% of listening in the UK while our ABC attracts around 20% for its suite of radio outlets. Some may say that that’s probably the optimum for a public broadcaster committed to providing a quality alternative to a commercial sector dedicated to appealing the lowest common denominator. But the ABC’s Director of Radio, Kate Dundas has indicated that that her organisation could do a lot better in terms of numbers and has instigated a far reaching “strategic review” of the whole enterprise in her care. According to an article in the Australian, “Talk of change has intensified recently after executives met last week to share comparative information about each network which has been refered to as “network alignment”.
0 submitted comments - 0 still awaiting moderation.
Radio freedom too precious to be taken for granted
Updated: 19 Apr 2010Imagine if one fine day our government decided that music be banned from Australian Radio. What would we do? Protest, complain through CRA? And if the order came, not with threat of court proceedings and possible fines, but under pain of death, what would we do? What would you do? In Somalia’s capital, Mogadishu, of 16 FM radio stations, 14 have ceased to play music of any kind after religious extremists threatened to execute staff if they so much as broadcast a note.
1 submitted comments - 0 still awaiting moderation.
Does MTR have the right stuff to win over Melbourne?
Updated: 15 Apr 2010It’s the biggest launch of a new station in Melbourne since vega, perhaps even Nova and maybe 3MP itself. Yet Melbourne’s new talk station MTR 1377 isn’t actually new, rather it’s a comprehensive format change for the lowly rated 3MP, whose license and frequency the new venture between it's owners and 2GB's will use.
In any case, MTR has the potential to change the Melbourne radio landscape forever. Even if it is mildly successful it could split the over 40’s talk audience three ways between itself, market leader 3AW and third placed ABC774. Such a split could reduce 3AW’s accustomed dominance or even pull it back into second place behind FOX FM. Or what odds the unthinkable for 3AW, that MTR is more than merely mildly successful and actually comes close or beats AW?
4 submitted comments - 0 still awaiting moderation.