In the first of a series of research articles from Xtra Insights, exploring The Future of Music on Radio, Hannah Lovegrove explores listener attitudes to music and content in Australia and the Asia Pacific region.
There was once a time when FM radio used to be all about the music.
Other content offerings like talk, news, weather and traffic updates, and advertisements were purely secondary, or the domain of AM.
During a format workshop at the Radio Asia conference in Kazakhstan, Paul Amos and Ronnie Stanton shared tips for tuning your format to best serve your audience.
Comparing music radio formats with music streaming services, Paul Amos from Xtra Insights addressed the question of whether services such as Spotify are now overtaking music radio formats.
For Bunbury, the largest population centre outside of Perth in Western Australia, ratings results released today show HOT FM is the station listened to most with 30.8%, it is the first radio survey for that station.
ABC South West was second with 17.5% and Triple J third with 14%.
Radio ratings have been released for Geelong, Victoria’s second largest city. Bay 93.9 and K Rock are the commercial radio stations serving the licence area, which has a population of 440,000.
But it was 774 ABC Melbourne that was the station listened to most All People 10+ following the release of Survey 1.
Bay 93.9 was a close second with 9.6% and K Rock third with 8.9%.
It is the first official survey for Geelong in more than a decade, with research carried out by Xtra Insights during October.
Radio ratings for Central Queensland, which takes in Rockhampton and Gladstone, have been released for the first time since 2001 as part of the commercial radio industry’s regional research program.
Hot FM was the station listened to most All People 10+ with 28.8% followed by Sea FM with 24.4% and ABC Capricornia 14%.