Melbourne’s new sport station SEN went to air on Monday and immediately impressed the local radio industry with its on-air quality.

It was a good week to start the station, with Melbourne’s top stories being the tragic death of cricketer David Hooks and the beginning of Melbourne’s Australian Open Tennis Championships.

Most Melbourne radio people canvassed by radioinfo thought the station sounded like a good quality sport focused talk station. Talkback content was plentiful and presenters were well briefed on their topics.

SEN insiders were ecstatic about the talkback response, telling radioinfo that it was a huge increase on the rate of callers which had been coming in to 3AK’s old format.

When 3AK closed it had a 1.2% rating and negative cash flow. SEN is hoping to translate this week’s good start into revenue quickly. This week there were a good number of sport focused and general ads in the schedule, but there were also some (presumably free) community service type announcements.

Managing director Danny Staffieri told The Age newspaper: “We’re planning to do a lot better than 1.2 per cent of the available audience… SEN is planned to be the local authority on all things sport.”

Staffieri played down the station’s lack of live broadcast rights, saying “I don’t think you need that much live sport. This isn’t just about who won
or lost, we want to get behind the stories.”

Australian sports-sponsorship is worth $1.24 billion a year, which the station is hoping to target to build its revenue.