Melbourne’s breakfast radio wars heats up ahead of Kyle & Jackie O debut
The fight for listeners in Melbourne’s breakfast radio scene is heating up, with local teams ready to defend their turf against the looming debut of shock jocks Kyle & Jackie O.
Fiona Byrne
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The fight for listeners in Melbourne’s lucrative breakfast radio market is heating up with the established giants and newly appointed teams ready to defend their turf against the looming arrival of Kyle Sandilands.
At stake are ratings, ego, reputations and money, making it a charged battleground.
Sandilands and his on-air partner Jackie ‘O’ Henderson will launch their aural assault on the KIIS FM Melbourne breakfast audience on April 29 with their Sydney-based show, that has been a dominant force in New South Wales for years.
Sandilands’ show is big, loud, bawdy and regularly crass, while also featuring celebrity interviews and family friendly prize giveaways.
The show keeps two censors busy beeping unacceptable comments and is on a 30 second broadcast delay, features daily tales from the ‘burbs in which callers and contestants share their sex-capades – it is like an audio version of Penthouse forum or, in another lifetime, the Playboy letters page – yet can also welcome politicians for serious chats and create genuinely touching and heartwarming moments for listeners.
It is a crazy, often foul-mouthed court presided over by King Kyle and it has clout.
The show was Sydney’s No. 1 FM and No. 2 overall breakfast program in the first GFK radio ratings survey of 2024 released on Thursday with a 15.4 (6am – 9am) audience share.
The show has 1.8m followers on Facebook and more than 515,000 people listened to The Kyle and Jackie O Show podcast in February. The pair recently signed a massive $200 million, 10-year deal to stay with the KIIS/ARN network and Sandilands has declared his show will top the ratings in Melbourne by the end of the year.
The multimillion-dollar question is: Will that clout be replicated in Melbourne in the battle for breakfast listeners as shows here double down on their formats and push their local credentials. There is nothing as extreme in Melbourne as The Kyle and Jackie O Show.
Melbourne’s breakky teams preparing for battle
Melbourne is a radio town. More than 4.6 million people listen to radio in Melbourne with the commercial FM breakfast market attracting over 2.16m listeners alone, according to industry body Commercial Radio & Audio (CRA).
Melbourne is the largest revenue market in Australia with CRA research showing total broadcast and digital audio revenue generated in the Melbourne market in 2023 topped $241 million.
3AW dominates the Melbourne breakfast shift with Ross Stevenson and Russel Howcroft retaining top spot with a huge 19.6 per cent of the audience in the first survey for 2024.
Gold FM’s Christian O’Connell fared best of the FM breakfast shows with 11.9 in that survey, ahead of Fox FM’s Fifi, Fev and Nick with 10.8, Marty Sheargold at Triple M registered 6.7 as did Nova’s now departed Ben, Liam and Belle, Smooth recorded 6.6 and KIIS 101.1’s fill-in Byron Cooke had a 5.9 per cent share.
Nova made a bold move in January, signing deposed KIIS FM team Jase Hawkins and Lauren Phillips to helm breakfast. They launched on March 8 meaning their presence won’t be reflected in the ratings until the release of survey 2 in April.
Hawkins and Phillips rated 9.1 in the final survey of 2023 at KIIS, before being axed to make way for Sandilands and Henderson.
KIIS Melbourne’s plunge since then to 5.9 will make it easier for Sandilands and Henderson to lift the ratings upon arrival in Melbourne and be seen as an instant success. There is plenty of strategy at play.
Chief content officer for Southern Cross Austero, Dave Cameron, said SCA — which owns Triple M and Fox FM — was focusing on its shows, not the pending arrival of Sandilands.
“I don’t have an opinion either way on the impact of that show (Kyle and Jackie O) except to say that they will need to find an available audience from somewhere that currently is not bolted on as listeners to other shows,” he said.
“What I think their strategy is at the moment is they are just draining their (KIIS Melbourne) audience, call it tanking their audience, so the only way will be up when they enter.
“But it will be important to remember they should be compared to that last show in that slot on KIIS which ended up on a 9.1 (ratings share), so really any result that is less than that will be seen as an inferior entry to the market.”
He described the Kyle and Jackie O Show as “one of the most brand unsafe shows in the world through their extreme content”.
“Regardless of whether they find an audience, or not, they will need to find commercial partners to overcompensate for the huge cost that they have just added to their company’s bottom line,” Cameron said.
“I’m not saying if it will work or not work, I’m just saying if you are coming to play in town you need to find an audience you can shake off someone else and the comparison will be the show that was last in that slot and where it ended up.”
Cameron said Triple M’s Marty Sheargold Show had a 60 per cent male, 40 per cent female audience with Fox FM’s Fifi, Fev and Nick holding a 60 per cent female, 40 per cent male split. Fifi, Fev and Nick joust regularly with Gold’s Christian O’Connell in the ratings for top FM bragging rights.
Sheargold’s show was listened to by “predominantly men who are wanting a hilarious lift in the morning”.
“It has an element of sport (and) there is a little bit of locker room, but it is not enough to be a turn off for what is a growing female audience for that show,” Cameron said.
Meanwhile, Fifi Box, Brendan Fevola and Nick Cody at Fox are more focused on pop culture and celebrity content.
“It is a show that probably gets out of the studio more than any other show in the country,” Cameron said.
“It is a big station that connects with Melbourne. It is the strategy we will continue to focus on with Fox. It is big and bold radio, but it is brand safe. It is not extreme. It will work for mums, it will work for daughters and it delivers localism, big stars, big laughs, big prizes.”
Sandilands has nothing on Stevenson
Melbourne radio legend Neil Mitchell said Sandilands would struggle to make a dint on Melbourne’s 3AW breakfast king, Ross Stevenson.
“I noticed Kyle was quoted this week saying he was going to be No. 1 in breakfast. Well, he should have had in brackets FM breakfast, because he is not going to touch Ross Stevenson. Ross is a radio genius,” Mitchell said.
“Ross is a very smart broadcaster, Kyle is a very smart broadcaster, but they are talking to different audiences.”
Brendan Taylor, group programming director at the Nova Network, which operates Nova 100 and Smooth 91.5, said 2024 was going to be one of Melbourne radio’s most talked about years with the upheaval in the breakfast shift.
Taylor said the core Smooth listener was aged 35 years and above.
The bulk of Nova listeners sit in the 25-54 demographic, with the core target audience in the 25-44 age range.
Both stations attract about a 50/50 male/female audience split.
Taylor said a strong breakfast show was crucial to the success from a ratings and commercial point of view for any station.
“It is where it all starts, it sets the tone and the brand for the station, so from a commercial point of view it is incredibly valuable and important to get that right and get that day part humming because it flows on to the rest of the station and business,” Taylor said.
“For Nova we pride ourselves on our strategy of live and local and that goes into the strategy of The Jase and Lauren Show.
“It has to be Melbourne, it has to be suburban, it has to reflect the day-to-day audience and it has to be consistent. Jase and Lauren, they are great people, it is a great show, it is cheeky, it has a relaxed tone, they are very authentic when it comes to their conversations and their connection with their audience.
“The success of Smooth is consistency and you have to deliver on the promise of more music, particularly in breakfast.”
Lauren Joyce, chief strategy and connections officer for ARN which owns KIIS FM and Gold FM, said the company was confident The Kyle and Jackie O Show already had a significant following in Melbourne.
“We can see it in the podcast downloads, we can see it in the Hour Of Power (Kyle and Jackie O’s daily highlights show) which has been heard in Melbourne for years, and we can see it in shows streaming outside of Sydney as well,” Joyce said.
“We obviously would not have moved ahead with it, if we did not think it was the right time to do it. The show is incredibly powerful, but to have the data to back it up does give us an additional layer of confidence that we were making the right decision here.
“We do know there is a real appeal for the show currently, but the more that we put the block in place for the launch we can see where those audiences are going to come from.”
With Sandilands aim to hit No. 1 in his new market by the end of the year, a casualty of his ambition could be Gold FM’s Christian O’Connell, Sandilands’ ARN stablemate, who has Melbourne’s top rating FM breakfast show.
The Gold audience is about 54 per cent female with the bulk of listeners in the 35-54 age range.
The KIIS Melbourne audience, which is aspirational, looking for an elevated experience and ifun, also attracts slightly more female than male listeners. The bulk of its audience is in the 25-54 demographic.
Joyce said ARN’s aim was to have the top two FM breakfast shows in Melbourne.
“As a network our priority is to secure that duopoly in Melbourne,” she said.
“It is the biggest radio market in Australia. We have had the No. 1 and 2 (FM) spots in Sydney for a long time with WSFM and KIIS106.5 and we know that for clients that is really valuable.
“I think you look at the size of the Melbourne radio market and there is certainly enough people listening for there to be room for everybody, and it is just that now with Kyle and Jackie O coming in there is a completely different offer, so it will be interesting to see how the listeners make decision around that.”
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