Good start, but a big job for Ben Fordham on 2GB

Ben Fordham knows that stepping into this new job is a big task.

2GB radio host Ben Fordham in his Sydney studio. Picture: John Feder/The Australian.

Ben Fordham isn’t getting carried away with his first radio ratings win, saying he doesn’t underestimate the big job in stepping into Alan Jones’ shoes in Sydney’s fiercely competitive radio market.

After months of uncertainty around Fordham’s performance on 2GB’s top rating breakfast show in Sydney, the 43 year-old has managed to keep most of Jones’s audience.

2GB’s breakfast audience share slipped just 0.6 percentage points to 17.3 per cent in Sydney, the nation’s biggest radio market, over the near two-month survey period to September 19. That’s much better than Nine’s forecast that it could drop to as low as 12 per cent, as they gambled on a younger host to take on Jones’ loyal audience.

“It’s one survey, that’s all it is. And I don’t underestimate for a moment the size of the shoes that I’ve been asked to fill,” Fordham told The Australian.

“And we still got some room to fill, so we’re going to keep on working harder and setting our goals even higher and we just want to produce the best radio show we possibly can.”

Fordham is grateful that the majority of Jones’ loyal audience have stuck by him, noting the strong choice in the Sydney radio market.

“If you have a look at the radio shows in Sydney breakfast, they’re all superstars. You know from the ABC, to KIIS FM and everyone in between, they’re all really good at what they do,” he said.

“So the fact that we’ve managed to stay competitive among all of those top operators is a credit to my team and I just feel very thankful that the audience has stuck with us.”

Fordham said he is conscious that he is up against a “cavalcade of superstars, who are the best at what they do at their radio stations”.

“I don’t underestimate for a moment the competition I’m up against, they are red hot, and they’re going to be coming back bigger and better, and I’m also conscious of the fact that what goes up must come down, it’s the law of physics.

“So I’m not go getting too carried away with the fact that the numbers are high because what goes up, must come down.”

ABC Sydney’s radio breakfast program, hosted by Wendy Harmer and Robbie Buck, is the second most popular program, and saw its audience share rise 1.6 points to 12.5 per cent. On the FM band, Kyle Sandilands and Jackie ‘O’ Henderson’s breakfast show on KIIS remained in top spot, steady at 10.2 per cent.

Fordham, who took over the 2GB hosting gig on June 1, also paid tribute to Jones, who built a strong audience at 2GB over nearly two decades.

“Alan Jones developed a loyal following among the Sydney listeners, and he generously handed those listeners over to me so it would have been a lot harder for me to start from scratch,” he said.

“It would have been a very different story today had I not been gifted a good opportunity from Alan Jones.”

2GB’s sister radio stations, 3AW in Melbourne and 6PR in Perth, also performed strongly as audiences flocked to talk back shows during the coronavirus crisis.

Nine managing director of radio Tom Malone described the survey numbers as a “really good result for talk radio” with lots of work still to do.

“This is part of a bigger and longer strategy at Nine about not just producing great content but doing it at a cost effective operating base and driving greater revenue because ultimately profitability has to be our measure of success,” he said.

“Our audience is a big part of that but you have to be able to commercialise it as well.”

Mr Malone said the advertising revenue has been “coming back well”, adding it was recovering through June and July, and then the impact of a second COVID-19 shutdown in Melbourne affected a lot of media businesses. It’s now starting to rebound again in September and into October.

“These audience results give us even greater confidence to go and talk to advertisers about the power of talk radio because no one does immediate or intimate like talk radio does and that’s why its such a powerful medium for advertisers,” he said.