‘A minute of dead air’: Triple J’s embarrassing on-air blunder

A short but noticeable blip in Triple J’s broadcast has attracted attention as the station faces a tough time.

A short but noticeable blip in Triple J’s broadcast has attracted attention — as it went dead for several minutes on air.

In the middle of the day’s proceedings, the government-funded station played a minute of dead air, with a presenter singing “I’m so sorry” from I Miss You by Blink 182 while technicians assumedly rushed to fix the issue.

The error was noticed by Guardian reporter Josh Butler who said there was then “another two minutes of dead air before they managed to rush a song on”.

“It’s just bloody good radio,” he said.

It comes as Triple J has lost more than half of its target youth audience since 2015, as Gen Z flee to TikTok, Spotify and even SmoothFM.

In a recent YouTube video – titled “Why you don’t listen to Triple J anymore” – Stuart McKay from audio company Nura explained the “downfall” of the taxpayer-funded radio station.

“It’s kind of a rite of passage to get to your late 20s and start to complain about the declining quality of Triple J,” he said.

“But Triple J’s not for you. It’s a tax-funded entity with a specific mandate to reach 18 to 24-year-olds. So Triple J frankly isn’t supposed to appeal to a 26-year-old dinosaur like myself.”

A short but noticeable blip in Triple J’s broadcast has attracted attention.

Over the past seven years, however, Triple J has lost 55 per cent of that audience – from an average of 22,000 listening at any given time in 2014, to just 10,000 in 2022, according to media analyst Tim Burrowes.

Over the same period, the number of young people listening to radio overall declined by 17.5 per cent – still a large drop, but nowhere near the collapse in Triple J’s audience.

“Now, a much bigger proportion of that young listening audience is choosing commercial radio,” Burrowes wrote for his Unmade Media newsletter earlier this year.

In 2014, nearly half of the “youth” station’s listeners were aged 25-39, and only 22 per cent were aged 18-24. That share has since fallen to 14 per cent.

Last year, Triple J sparked widespread backlash with a tweet that read, “Did it hurt? When you aged out of the youth radio station.”

One popular reply said: “Did it hurt? When you became a carbon copy of a top 40 station? When you became a caricature of yourself? When you lost what made Triple J unique? When you just now turned your back on people who support you? No? I didn’t think so! Take a look at the people you just alienated.”