Southern Cross Austereo has confirmed that 2Day FM has changed its music policy, as programs resume for the 2018 broadcast year.
“Yes we have tweaked our programming to make sure we’re playing more of the music that our audiences want to hear,” a spokesperson has told radioinfo.
As reported earlier, the station’s new breakfast show with Em, Grant and Ed resumed this week, and with it came some surprising 80s and 90s songs added to the rotation in the prime time breakfast slot.
2Day had a tough ratings year in 2017, with CHR format competition coming from Nova and KIIS, while WSFM and Smooth strengthened their numbers in a less competitive demographic and psychographic. The SCA strategy may be to use 2Day moves its music position slightly older to slow the growth of ARN’s WSFM and Nova’s Smooth in the Sydney market, because it has not been too successful in holding back the competitors in the CHR format.
Last year 2Day climbed briefly with the introduction of the Em Rusciano and Harley Breen breakfast show, but then slipped back during the later surveys of the year, with the station finishing on 3.9% in the last survey of 2017. In survey 8, 2Day finished as the second last commercial station, ahead of Talking Lifestyle and just behind 2CH.
The graph below shows 2016 and 2017 surveys, with the station overall share in blue and the breakfast show share in red.
Below are the 2016 and 2017 whole market charts to see how 2Day performed against its competitors. Mouse over the station share lines to see the specific numbers for each survey.
It is not known at this stage whether there are ‘tweaks’ to any other Hit Network stations around the country.