Why ABC Melbourne’s radio ratings continue to plummet amid review

The local arm of ABC radio needs to address its “underlying elitism” in order to fix a dramatic ratings slump, industry experts say.

ABC Radio Melbourne mornings host Virginia Trioli has lost almost half her listeners in the past 18 months.

Industry experts say ABC Radio Melbourne need to address its “underlying elitism” to fix its plummeting ratings.

The latest ratings results showed ABC Melbourne sits in seventh position overall across all timeslots — a far cry from 18 months ago, when it was in fourth spot and a close competitor to main rival 3AW.

The ABC’s total radio audience share in the Victorian capital slipped by 0.2 percentage points to 6 per cent, according to data released last week by research company GfK.

The station shed listeners in the morning, afternoon and drive timeslots, hosted by Virginia Trioli, Jacinta Parsons and Rafael Epstein.

At the start of 2022, the national broadcaster accounted for 7.4 per cent of the total audience.

Monash University senior journalism lecturer and Virtual Radio Ga Ga author Dr Andrea Jean Baker said there was an “underlying elitism” at the Melbourne organisation.

“There is an entrenched trope that ABC Radio Melbourne caters for the middle to upper classes who drink red wine and go to the Opera on the weekends, and I think it is partly true today,” she said.

“There is an underlying elitism that needs to be addressed, because it distances audiences ‘who pay their 20 cents a day to listen to Aunty’.

“ABC Radio Melbourne need to spice it up a bit, adopt a wider intersectional and multicultural lens, bring in a diverse age group of culturally savvy broadcasters who can offer more urban grit and an empathetic voice about the cultural capital and largest city in Australia.”

Veteran broadcaster Trioli dropped a further 0.3 points to 7.7 per cent audience share in the most recent data survey, meaning she had lost almost half of her listeners in the past 18 months.

It comes as the ABC was forced to establish an internal advisory group to review all metropolitan programs and presenters.

It’s understood a factor being considered was the failure to recruit fresh talent from outside the taxpayer-funded giant.

Virginia Trioli. Picture: ABC

Rafael Epstein. Picture: ABC

Dr Baker said this partly contributed to the drop with listeners feeling “contempt and boredom”.

“The failure to recruit fresh and exciting talent every few years has partly contributed to ABC Radio Melbourne’s dip in ratings,” she said.

“It is home to excellent journalists, but there is a comfort zone that breeds familiarity, a bit of contempt and boredom on the part of the listener.”

Dr Baker said radio listeners were declining around the world.

“In the era of misinformation and fake news, there is a crisis of faith in journalism, in general,” she said.

“The online media landscape is so rich and diverse, people’s attention spans are shorter, and many get their news fix from social media. It’s a national and global phenomenon, not peculiar to ABC Radio Melbourne.

“Commercial shock jock radio stations, such as 3AW, has always tended to be the broadcast Kings, it’s radio talkback heaven, catering to the masses.

“The ABC is the pinnacle of public service journalism in Australia, and its last ‘not-for-profit’ breath should not be tied to the commercial system which feeds the advertiser.”

Mumbrella founder Tim Burrowes said the ABC was struggling with audiences across the board.

“While ABC Melbourne has seen its share go backwards again, ABC Radio National’s Melbourne figure is even more concerning,” he said.

“For instance, on average just 22,000 Melburnians are listening to Patricia Karvelas on RN Breakfast compared to 143,000 listening to Ross and Russel on 3AW or 79,000 tuning in to Christian O’Connell on Gold.”

In a statement, ABC said RN Breakfast was “hugely influential”.

“To judge RN Breakfast’s performance solely on its average audience figure, based on a quarter hour, grossly misrepresents its listenership and how that listenership engages with the program over three hours each morning,” it read.

“RN Breakfast continues to be hugely influential, reaching just over 300,000 listeners in the five capital cities across each week.

“Once you factor in its total national broadcast audience, that figure rises to around 430,000 people.”

ABC said on demand listenership was not captured by GfK ratings.