2GB is still Sydney’s No. 1 but they are struggling to hold their audience
The 2GB bunker has been consumed with hand wringing and finger pointing since the recent radio survey showing the station is bleeding listeners, writes Annette Sharp
NSW
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There is blood in the water at 2GB following the release of the latest radio ratings showing the once unassailable Sydney talk radio station is within a point of losing its heavyweight title as Sydney’s No. 1 radio station.
A margin of just 0.9 share points, representing 0.9 per cent of the potential market, now separates the talk radio station (11.7) and second-placed easy listening station Smooth FM (10.8) with Sydney radio audiences — in stark contrast to their Melbourne counterparts — increasingly opting for “less talk” as they switch off chattering commentators in favour of “feel good” ballads that help them relax.
ABC’s 702 meanwhile sits in third position (10.1) following its softest survey result of the year.
Inside the 2GB bunker, staffers say the panic at the Nine Radio station has been palpable since the release of the survey 3 results on June 1, results which confirmed the four lucrative daytime programs on the station – breakfast with Ben Fordham, mornings with Ray Hadley, afternoons with Deb Knight and drive with Jim Wilson — as well as both the evening and weekend shows – all shed audiences during the most recent 10-week survey period, from April 18 to May 22.
Most troubling for the station, say insiders, is the drop recorded by GB breakfast host Fordham who saw his audience slip by two share points between surveys three and two on the back of Fordham’s 2.6 point slump between the two previous surveys, the first of which saw Fordham capture a heady 18.1 per cent of the market.
Executives and staff alike at 2GB are said to have spent recent weeks “consumed” by the drift of listeners away from the station.
The latest survey comes a year after the departure of the reigning king of talk radio, breakfast host Alan Jones, the man widely attributed with spearheading 2GB’s 17-year winning streak.
Along with the hand wringing, there has been much finger pointing, say insiders, as radio bosses search for reasons for the recent decline.
The breakfast and morning show programs are blaming the afternoon programs for the drift; the afternoon programs are pointing to the breakfast show; GB management says the fault is with radio audiences now suffering “pandemic fatigue”; while radio rivals say the drop lies squarely with Nine Radio managing director Tom Malone and his overly cocky content boss Greg Byrnes who have made too many changes too quickly.
Meanwhile, from his ranch-style mansion at Mt White — a property largely paid for by 2GB’s advertisers — the man who transformed the station into a ratings juggernaut and consigned former top talk station 2UE to the media annals, John Singleton, is adamant it is “leftist action groups” who spearheaded advertiser boycotts against the station in 2019 and 2020 that are to blame for the radio station’s problems.
Nine Radio boss Tom Malone last week denied his management team was in a panic or that he was contemplating making changes to the talent roster following the release of the latest figures.
“2GB continues to hold the No. 1 position in the Sydney radio market,” Malone told The Saturday Telegraph, rejecting talk the management team is in crisis mode.
“The 2GB audience is very stable and we are better than the average. This is the natural ebb and flow of radio ratings, and no different to what other stations experience.”
He agreed there had been a lot of changes at the station during the past 12 months, with an older audience who traditionally “struggled” with change but maintained 2GB’s audience was adapting.
As for Fordham, whose harshest critics say he isn’t as strident in his views, commanding or politically conservative as his predecessor Jones, Malone said the commentator is as safe as houses.
“Ben Fordham is doing a terrific job and he will dominate Sydney radio for decades,” said Malone.
It’s a view also held by Malone’s deputy 2GB head of content Byrnes, the station’s head cheerleader.
In March Byrnes brashly told industry website Radio Today Fordham was on track to achieve a massive 20 per cent share in Sydney.
Such a share would be a record for 2GB.
Jones’s best result in almost two decades at the station was a 19.2 share in 2011.
“Ben and the team are determined and will not be taking it easy or taking the foot off the accelerator,” said Byrnes in March.
“He will aim to go to 19. He will be chasing down 3AW Breakfast [with a 22.2 per cent share]. There’s no doubt about that.”
FM radio bosses last week said GB looked to be still coming to terms with the fact Fordham’s figures have been “artificially inflated” by public interest in Covid-19 during a pandemic year, a “rookie mistake” said one that has distorted the real figures.
They insist his 18.1 result was an anomaly rather than a trend.
“Talk back and listening stations saw a sharp increase during Covid as listeners turned to these stations for information in a time of uncertainty,” said one who asked not to be named.
“These stations have just now reset to their pre-Covid figures and the margin is tighter than they’d hope,” they said, adding the figures will be artificially inflated again during similar high interest news events or if Sydney goes into another lockdown.
Meanwhile the battle over GB’s drifting audience rages.
Since Jones’s retirement, GB has picked up younger listeners at the expense of its diehard older ones.
This audience renewal was in the grand plan of station bosses who maintain they are striving for “generational change” at GB, something they hope a younger and more politically centrist Fordham – someone who is more in synch with the political views of Nine’s Labor-leaning publishing division – can deliver.
Whether 66-year-old Hadley might have stemmed the tide of departing older listeners had he been appointed to the breakfast slot rather than Fordham, 44, will, it seems now, never be known.
Hadley, dropped from Nine television’s football commentary team in 2020 after being overlooked for Jones’s show — a role for which he was groomed for 17 years — appears to remain on the outer.
The decision by Triple M owner Southern Cross Austereo (SCA) to drop Hadley’s program from its radio network, where he often held a 40 per cent audience share, has less to do with this though than with the recent severing of Nine’s relationship with SCA.
Hadley’s ratings, though on a downwards trend over the past five surveys, remain strong.
In the latest survey Hadley held on to a 14.2 share – larger than Fordham’s and the dominant share of the day on GB where Knight slipped to 8 (down two points) and Wilson to 6.5 (down 0.5).
Data collection agency GfK could not explain where GB’s departed listeners are going but benefiting from the audience drift appear to have been both Nova Entertainment’s Smooth Fm and ABC 702.
Smooth has been the No. 1 FM station in Sydney for 15 of the past 16 surveys, a winning streak that began in 2019.
Nova Entertainment Group programming director Paul Jackson believes the heavyweight title is now within Smooth’s grasp.
“I think (Smooth) has got a good chance. Normally we are focused on the FM numbers … it’s a different race we are running in the FM battle,” he told media website Mumbrella this month.
“We’re a big, broad station sweeping up the whole market. I’m not sure what 2GB’s cumes (cumulative audience figures) are, around a couple of hundred thousand, but Smooth is over a million cume. Not to be disparaging but I refer to it as kitchen sink radio, targeted at an older audience.”
While Smooth FM’s figures have in all likelihood been boosted by the collapse of one-time FM market leader 2DayFM, whose share was languishing at 3.5 in the latest survey, Jackson believes it is KIIS FM breakfast duo Kyle Sandilands and Jackie O who may yet topple Fordham and claim the title of Sydney’s top-rating breakfast show – that is if Wendy Harmer and Robbie Buck on ABC 702 don’t beat them to it.
The ABC breakfast team – with a talk program that is both light and dark — were just a slender 0.4 share behind Fordham in the latest survey, with a 13.1 share making the race to capture the breakfast market a tight one. Kyle and Jackie O held a 12.9 share.
2GB insiders say while the pressure on staff and management to hold on to the prized No. 1 slot is vital to the radio station achieving its ad revenue targets, it is no longer essential to Nine’s plans.
The radio station has already saved millions replacing $4 million-man Jones with Fordham, who is said to be on a three-year contract worth around $600,000 to $800,000 a year, cheap by Jones’s standards, even if the station did have to spend a small fortune promoting Fordham at the expense of other station stars.
Advertisers also like Fordham, which sources say might prompt them to stick around if and when GB does concede the top ratings spot to a rival.
“He’s a good salesman and he’s writing a bit of money.
“The ad department may not be able to charge as much as they once did for live reads by Jones, but he’s sure doing a lot of them.”
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