RADIO WARS: Townsville’s 2024 radio ratings revealed, Power 100, Star 106.3, Hit 103.1, TRIPLE M, ABC, Triple J

The 2024 radio ratings have been released, giving us a good look at what Townsville listeners are doing in a post-Pricey world. See which stations are growing, and which are losing interest.

Daneka Hill

@DanekaHill

2 min read

October 29, 2024 - 3:58PM

Townsville Bulletin

Triple M Breakfast's hosts Cliffo and Kate lead a campaign in September pushing people to ditch their work clothes on Friday and instead wear a Cowboy's jersey ahead of the semi final game. Picture: Shae Beplate.

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The 2024 radio ratings have been released, giving us a good look at what Townsville listeners are doing in a post-Pricey world.

The ratings were released by radio research company Xtra Insight on Tuesday, October 29, and they paint an interesting picture for radio, showing that every single station except ABC RN were able to grow their audience in the past 12 months.

Total weekly audience (largest to smallest) source: Xtra Insight

Triple M: 87,500

Hit 103.1: 75,400

Star 106.3: 58,500

Power100: 57,300

Triple J: 28,300

ABC North Queensland: 24,000

ABC RN: 8,800

ABC NewsRadio: 8,000

ABC Classic: 6,800

Cliffo and Kate. The breakfast gig is Kate Jeboult’s first job in radio, while Guy Clifton was shifted over from Townsville’s Hit 103.1 breakfast show.

Triple M’s listenership remains the highest in Townsville, sitting at 87,500 weekly listeners - an 18,000 increase on 2023 listenership figures.

The next most-listened to station was Hit 103.1 which had the fastest growing morning program (9am to 12pm) in Townsville, drawing in an extra 13,000 listeners.

Power100 was Townsville’s second fastest growing station (+12,200) behind Triple M (+18,000).

Tom ’Donny’ Watson and Sam ’Archie’ Arenson host the breakfast shift on Power100.

ABC RN was the biggest loser out of all nine stations in the survey, losing listeners across every session except the evenings (7pm to midnight).

The losses almost perfectly line up with audience increases at ABC North Queensland and ABC NewsRadio.

Listenership at Star 106.3 was also treading water as the ARN-owned station struggled to match the audience growth of its four fellow commercial stations, only growing its audience by 4,900.

The region’s least popular station, ABC Classic, managed to grow its audience by 1100 people - 1000 of which were listeners aged under 24 years, according to the survey.

Triple M and Hit are both owned by Southern Cross Austereo (SCA), the largest radio broadcaster in Australia.

Bronte Langbroek and Danny Lakey, who host the Hit 103.1 breakfast show. They are Gold Coast-based and broadcast their show across Queensland.

SCA’s head of regional content Blair Woodcock said it’s been a transformative year for Triple M after long-time breakfast presenter Steve ‘Pricey’ Price retired on Christmas Day.

“Triple M newcomers, Guy ‘Cliffo’ Clifton and Kate Jeboult have delivered truly engaging content over the past ten months, earning them their first #1 breakfast show in town,” Mr Woodcock said of the radio ratings.