This was published 7 months ago
ABC Radio Melbourne’s shows fail to recapture audiences
By Calum Jaspan
ABC Radio Melbourne has continued its slow start to 2024, delivering its second-worst result since records began, with its flagship shows and revitalised content so far failing to recapture audiences.
The station, which is part of a wider reshuffle of the public broadcaster’s audio services, saw its market share of radio listeners fall from 6.5 per cent to 6 per cent, according to figures from ratings agency GfK’s second survey of the year, which covers the period from February 4 to March 30.
ABC Radio’s share, according to the latest survey, is just 0.2 per cent higher than the record low 5.8 per cent share recorded in the first survey of 2023. GfK’s records date back to 2004.
Comedian Sammy J hosts ABC Radio Melbourne’s breakfast show.
Listener numbers dipped for both the station’s breakfast show, hosted by Sammy J (its audience share dropped from 8.1 per cent to 7.3 per cent), and its mornings show, hosted by Raf Epstein (down from 7 per cent to 6.7 per cent). The drive program with Ali Moore retained its 5.8 per cent share.
Meanwhile, new mornings host on 3AW Tom Elliott marginally grew his audience, with a leading 16.9 per cent (up from 16.8 per cent) market share in the mornings time slot. Elliott took over from radio veteran Neil Mitchell at the beginning of the year, building on Mitchell’s established No.1 spot. Nine owns 3AW and this masthead.
It is early days, however. The second survey of the year had significant overlap with the first. The categorisations for time slots by GfK do not always perfectly align with show times.
3AW pairing Russel Howcroft and Ross Stevenson led the breakfast slot again with an 18.1 per cent audience share (down from 19.6 per cent), followed by Fox’s Fifi, Fev & Nick, who grew their share from 10.8 per cent to 11.2 per cent and leapfrogged Gold’s The Christian O’Connell Show as the number one FM program.
The Christian O’Connell Show suffered the largest drop at breakfast, falling 2 percentage points to a 9.9 per cent market share. New Nova pairing Jase & Lauren, who replaced Ben, Liam & Belle on March 8, contributed to a lift for the network, boosting its audience by 1.6 percentage points to an 8.3 per cent share at breakfast, with the network also rising from 7.1 per cent to 7.6 per cent overall.
Jase & Lauren were dumped by KIIS FM at the end of 2023 ahead of the imminent launch of Kyle & Jackie O into Melbourne at the end of April. They were subsequently hired by Nova. KIIS owner ARN will spend millions in marketing to kickstart the launch of the show in an attempt to establish the station as a key competitor in Melbourne.
Currently, KIIS’ total audience share is 6.2 per cent, with a breakfast share of 6.4 per cent.
Triple J ceded ground, dropping from a 4.3 per cent share to a 3.2 per cent audience share, while Radio National grew its audience from 2.2 per cent to 2.3 per cent of the market. At breakfast, Patricia Karvelas’ show edged up 0.8 percentage points to land on a 3.7 per cent share.
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