With the Wollongong radio market going into survey next week, Illawarra Mercury reporter Cassie McCullagh wrote an interesting piece on some of the key players in the market.
The story, titled ‘Making Waves,’ profiled Wendy Gee and also spoke to Andrew Gordon and Janet Cameron amongst others. Some of it read:
Seven years ago Wendy Gee was sacked from her job as sales manager at i98FM. Last year she took rival station WaveFM to the coveted No1 position for the first time in 10 years…
“I’d be lying if I didn’t admit it was wonderful,” says [Gee], a slow smile breaking into laughter… Having steered her station to the top of what is widely described as one of the toughest radio markets in Australia, the success, albeit by just one percentage point, marks the end of a long and painful chapter for Gee, one which began in August 1996.
It was a Friday morning when she, then sales manager at i98, was called into an office and told she no longer had a job. “It was such a dreadful shock,” she recalls. “Normally if you’d done something, at least you’d get a warning, or you’d be told. I think it was very cruel. Even if somebody’s done something wrong, you’d talk to them about it. I had done nothing that I knew of, and no-one had said my work wasn’t good. “The figures were wonderful, everything was wonderful, everything was going fantastically … I was just stunned.”
Whatever their professional assessment of Gee, the station’s management didn’t count on her personal tenacity. Refusing to sign an end-of-employment agreement until she was given a reason for her dismissal, Gee remained in heated, closed-door discussions for most of the day. She later lodged an unfair dismissal claim against the station, which indicated it would strongly defend the allegation… The impact on her life was massive.
Gee began her own marketing company, Wendy Gee Management, and quickly built a solid list of local clients, which she maintains today. After initially declining an offer from WaveFM’s owner Janet Cameron to join her station as sales manager, Gee accepted in April, 1997. Two years after the sacking, i98FM resolved the unfair dismissal case with an out-of-court settlement, on the condition the terms not be disclosed… In April, 2000, Gee was appointed general manager of WaveFM, making the station the only one in Australia to be owned and managed by women. She set about putting her ideas on the station into practice.
One thing Gee, who is a fan of both opera and country music, is sure of is that the station’s predominantly over-30s audience members have contemporary tastes. “We’re much younger today than our parents were … If you’re 50 you’re really 40 today, if you’re 40 you’re really 30 today.” Her thinking is based on personal experience.
What does she say to suggestions that Wave’s No1 status is due not to the success of its own efforts, but rather to the failings of i98?… I think they’d taken their eye off the ball, I think they’d made a lot of changes.” WIN Corporation deputy chairman and i98FM general manager Andrew Gordon admits Wave’s victory was unexpected. “We were a bit surprised, although we’d made a couple of tactical changes in strategy with a couple of our programs and I guess in one way we kind of knew we may be putting ourselves at risk of an audience shift.’
After an “all-round tidy up and re-examination” of i98’s format, and the introduction of Erica Hodge to the breakfast line-up, 31-year-old Gordon, son of media magnate Bruce Gordon, says the station is in better shape. “We’ve rebranded ourselves as `the new i98′ and we don’t mean that as just a cynical tagging of new on to the title… I’m fairly confident… I’d like to hope that we’d show a fairly strong return to form. I not going to make any bold predictions at this stage. I think it’s pretty foolish to be too arrogant going into a survey. I feel pretty good about it, though.”
Janet Cameron is also circumspect in her predictions for the outcome of the coming survey. “While we’re delighted with being No1, I have to say, to be No1 in our demographic is more important to us than being No1 overall. No1 is a great ego trip, but the reality is the important thing is to be No1 in our demographic. The reality is clients tend to target their customers in particular demographics – male, female, certain age groups – and as long as we can deliver to them what they’re looking for that’s the most important thing.”