ABC management working on a report to urgently overhaul its troubled radio stations

The public broadcaster’s radio arm requires a significant overhaul to fix the declining audiences across the country, including its lack of news updates and local content.

ABC managing director David Anderson. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Martin Ollman

ABC management has been tasked with addressing a list of long-running issues at its major city radio stations, particularly high-level concerns that it is failing to provide sufficient news updates and local content.

This has been made more urgent after the latest radio survey released last week showed ABC local radio in its flagship Sydney market continued to lose listeners, with tens of thousands switching to other stations. Meanwhile, ratings in its other markets remain of concern amid long-term declines.

An internal report on entrenched problems in the radio arm was submitted to the ABC board ahead of its meeting in Perth last month, revealing extensive analysis of what has gone wrong with detailed recommendations on how to fix the issues.

The Australian understands that chief content officer Chris Oliver-Taylor has subsequently been asked by the board to work on a shortlist of recommendations considered most urgent and pertinent to the public broadcaster.

The performance of local radio continues to be front of mind. On Thursday, two days after the latest radio ratings were released, members of the ABC’s Yourspace online community were emailed the latest in a series of questionnaires about their listening habits. It included inquiries about which ABC stations people had listened to in the previous week, their favourite ABC local radio outlet, and a ­request to rate stations from 1-10.

Listeners were questioned about content, the ABC’s effectiveness as a radio broadcaster, and most notably how it was ­regarded as a source of news and local information.

They were asked how ABC local radio could “do a better job of connecting you to your local community”, the “quality” of its three key current affairs shows, AM, PM and The World Today, and its performance in the weekday timeslot “from 9am to midday”.

One prominent former ABC radio presenter believes the biggest problem for the local radio division has been the ditching of its 7.45am news bulletin in 2020: “Radio is habit and the ABC broke the habit of its listeners when it ditched the 7.45 news.”

This is backed by present commercial talk radio broadcasters, one of whom spoke of “delight” among colleagues when the 7.45am bulletin was ditched, ­because many listeners used to switch to the ABC when it was on.

ABC’s breakfast radio market share has tumbled into single digits under current host James Valentine. Picture: Richard Dobson

At the time the public broadcaster axed the popular bulletin, it said the change would deliver about $2m in savings. ABC managing director David Anderson said then that the decision was “quite difficult” and “a tough choice to make”.

Meanwhile, a high-level source with direct knowledge of the ­recent review says there is a growing belief that the ABC’s radio ­operations around the country needed to adopt distinctive ­approaches to each local market, rather than a centralised ­approach: “Audiences are quite different, and you’ve got to tailor your offering to each local market. There is a perception that the ABC is not relevant enough to local ­audiences – and that local producers are hamstrung in making it more relevant to audiences.”

The source noted an urgent need for an executive whose sole focus was monitoring the ABC’s radio performance in each major city: “In a commercial environment, if radio ratings had dropped to where they are, someone would be fired.”

Under the ABC’s recent restructure, there will be two senior executives devoted to radio – who are currently the subject of a search – one to look after content, the other to look after strategy.

Chairwoman Ita Buttrose has voiced her concerns about the issues within the radio arm and she has been focused on the need to forge ahead with aspects of the overhaul as a matter of urgency.

Another concern is that many interviews across the major stations are too long, and need to be shorter and sharper to keep listeners engaged. There is also a concern about a falling-off in morning ratings in local radio. In Sydney, Wendy Harmer and Robbie Buck departed on a high in 2021 with a 15.9 per cent market share in the breakfast radio slot – a number that tumbled into single digits under current breakfast host James Valentine. There is no talk of moving Valentine off breakfast.

One option believed to be under consideration is to provide more practical production help to key radio timeslots, such as breakfast, traditionally thinly resourced at the ABC relative to competing commercial networks.

Revamping the major ABC metropolitan stations remains the focus for management, but sources say all brands face problems and nothing is off limits.

This includes other stations such as Radio National, triple j, Double J and ABC Classic, which will be dealt with once changes are made to the other major stations.

An ABC spokesman said: “The review into ABC local radio and its recommendations are a matter for ABC management. We have no further comment.”