Hard yakka: Latest ratings foreshadow future of talk radio
A new duo is now wearing the crown of Adelaide breakfast radio royalty after toppling their long-reigning FM rivals.
Nova’s Jodie Oddy and Andrew ‘Haysey’ Hayes have won the third official GFK radio survey for the year in their onward march to topple Triple M.
Becoming Adelaide’s new radio front runner is no mean feat, in the midst of winter, when football dominates Triple M’s long-running program agenda.
Big money is splashed around to entice AFL star players into the studio and drop the odd bombshell, which is then handed to television stations with blaring Triple M visual branding.
But Roo, Ditts and Loz will undoubtedly take it on the chin and come back harder next survey after achieving 17 straight wins.
Knowing Roo and especially Chris Dittmar, as I do, they played elite sport at the top level to win at all costs and radio is no different.
Nova’s rise was 1 per cent, lifting it to 13.8 per cent of the breakfast share.
Since Haysey joined Jodie at Nova in early 2023 there’s been undeniable movement at the station with the top spot seemingly inevitable.
Both have a strong grasp of humour combined with serious news judgement in the crucial slot, and they could retain the honour for some time to come – but then again, expect the unexpected in radio.
Working closely with Haysey at 7News, I’ve long seen his ambition and, more often than not, have been on the receiving end of his incisive and quick wit.
He’s emerged, with Jodie, as the real-deal team.
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But Nova’s important breakfast performance wasn’t repeated across the day with the station slipping by 0.6 per cent to come third overall behind MIX102.3 and Triple M.
On the FM band, MIX would have been disappointed that Hayley Pearson and Max Burford didn’t enjoy a bigger rise than just 0.4 per cent, but in a close race, any increase could be considered a minor victory.
All the FM breakfast shows, including SAFM, saw rises in this survey, so who were the losers?
FIVEaa continues its downhill trajectory to the point of major concern.
David Penberthy and Will Goodings dropped by 1.1 per cent, which was the largest of any breakfast show.
It’s strike three in survey slumps for the de-crowned former breakfast kings, and they now descend into dangerous single digits with only a 9.7 per cent share.
They still sit in fifth spot on the all-important table, and even further behind the ABC which dropped by 0.9 per cent with a 10.8 per cent overall market share.
ABC duo Jules Schiller and Sonya Feldhoff will also be feeling bruised after having little to show for their efforts.
It must make getting out of bed at 3.30am on any bleak June morning about as appealing as drying yourself with a damp towel.
But as always, the audience will never know it as they cheerfully battle on for another day, week and month.
Rory McLaren’s morning show on Aunty is still finding its feet with a 0.1 per cent drop.
AA also dropped in mornings by 0.2 percent but remained steady in afternoons as Stacey Lee takes maternity leave awaiting the birth of her first baby.
But there will be smiles all round in the sport department with the drive show climbing by a much needed 2.2 per cent.
Evenings was another golden spot for AA with a 1.9 per cent climb to 20.3 per cent, as main rival ABC’s Spence Denny, in his Dame Nellie-like return from retirement, slumped by a whopping 3.4 per cent, now languishing 14 percentage points behind.
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Now that evergreen Leith Forrest has moved from AA evenings to afternoons to cover Lee, watch these spaces.
The simple fact is that breakfast cumulative audiences have generally dropped.
The biggest losers were unsurprisingly AA and the ABC, with 11,000 and 16,000 listeners tuning out, respectively.
Talk radio is an expensive beast to produce and, quite frankly, bloody hard work.
Less than decade ago, everyone tuned in to these news radio outlets eager to discover what had happened overnight and what the coming day was likely to dish up.
These shows broke the news of the day, which others often followed.
It still happens, but there are so many resources for instant news these days that talk radio is, sadly, but inevitably, becoming background noise rather than a lifeline to the real world.
I know, firsthand, the effort put in by producers behind the scenes on these shows.
Getting interview talent to the line first thing in the pre-dawn darkness is a daily challenge.
As veteran broadcaster Matt Abraham once put it, if you don’t have a good radio producer, it’s like wading through wet concrete.
They know all the major players in town and have the ability to persuade them to share their thoughts across the airwaves, when they often need some convincing.
Everyone from Prime Ministers to Premiers and beyond knows it’s wise to stay on the right side of an influential program producer.
I’ve been lucky enough to work with some of the finest, many who’ve now left the industry for greener pastures and taking with them their telephone contact books you’d almost kill for.
They keep every phone number of every contact they’ve ever made.
Some have faded away while others have been snapped up by the government eager to offer them better pay and conditions.
With them have gone decades of radio experience, which younger producers find hard to replicate in these changing and challenging times.
Talk radio stations are extremely lucky to still have the experienced veterans who have remained.
They are like rare jewels left behind after a ram raid.
Mike Smithson is an unpaid commentator for various Adelaide radio stations and is also weekend presenter and political analyst for 7News.
