Radio ratings: A deeper dive
Triple M and Nova have reasons to be cheerful; at KIIS, they’re fearful that Kyle’s still waiting in the wings. On AM, Bob’s back and Spencer’s strutting his stuff.
Due to other commitments, I wasn’t able to provide much commentary with the raw results of the third 2025 radio ratings survey when they came out on Tuesday.*
Now, after a closer look at the official numbers, and a few others that fell off the back of the proverbial truck, I can offer a clearer picture of the results and some further analysis.
There was something for almost everyone in the results. Triple M won overall in terms of audience share, but it was Nova 1069’s Ash Bradnam, David “Luttsy” Lutteral and Nikki Osborne (pictured above) who held on to first place in Breakfast — but only just, with previous longtime favourites Stav Davidson, Abby Coleman and Matt Acton a statistical whisker behind them.
A win is a win, but I think Nova would’ve wanted a more definitive result to demonstrate that the show, which was only recalibrated to include Osborne this year, is building rather than its success being interpreted as audiences sampling a new offering.
In any case, a tight race is a good race, and audiences can only benefit if the market leaders are looking over their shoulders and constantly creating the best content they can to stay ahead.
Quite a bit of attention is being placed on KIIS 97.3’s Robin Bailey, Kip Wightman and Corey Oates. It’s no secret that the grand plan for KIIS owner ARN was to dump local shows in the major capitals in favour of a networked Breakfast with Kyle Sandilands and Jackie “O” Henderson.
Those plans have gone a little pear-shaped in Melbourne, where the Sydney-based Kyle and Jackie O Show is languishing at the bottom of the commercial-radio pile — having lost the modest gains it made in the previous survey.
[The No. 1 FM station in Brekkie in Melbourne is on Nova, hosted by one-time B105 star Jase Hawkins (formerly known as “Labrat”) and Lauren Phillips, who were sacked from KIIS to make way for K&J. So, yes, there is a God.]
Robin, Kip and Corey slipped in the ratings from a 12pc share to 10.6, putting them in fourth place behind Greg “Marto” Martin, Margaux Parker and Dan Anstey on Triple M, and ahead of a resurgent “Barbecue” Bob Gallagher on 4BH, which leads the AM pack.
Make no mistake: this is still a good result for Robin, Kip and Corey; it is still a competitive show. Rolling the dice by replacing them with the divisive Kyle and Jackie O Show would not seem like a wise thing to do.
But ARN hasn’t been making too many wise decisions lately. As this Noise11 story notes, the company — which is committed to paying obscenely high salaries to Sandilands and Henderson over 10 years — has been sacking dozens of other employees, is sending key jobs offshore and is tanking on the share market.
I wouldn’t be shocked if ARN did decide to continue down the networking route, and I wouldn’t be shocked if the Kyle and Jackie O Show found an audience in Brisbane. But it’s a huge risk, especially given that the Mad F***ing Witches, an activist group targeting companies that advertise with “Vile Kyle”, would almost certainly ramp up its campaign even further.
So much, so far, for the Breakfast shift.
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It was Triple M that held on to the overall audience crown despite coming third in Breakfast. Its standout program was in Drive, which was won by The Rush Hour with Dobbo and Elliot — the local Brisbane show that was reinstated after networked Marty Sheargold said some things he should not have said.
Although nowhere near the frontrunners in Brisbane, and way behind its Nine Radio sister stations in Sydney and Melbourne, talk station 4BC had a reasonable result. It remained steady in the Breakfast shift (despite a big promotional push for host Peter Fegan) and gaining elsewhere, except in Mornings.
ABC Brisbane, had mixed results, beating 4BC overall by a decent margin (6.5pc plays 5.3), and in the Breakfast and Morning shifts, but falling behind its commercial talk rival in Afternoons, Drive and Evenings.
Because the ratings provider defines Drive as 4-7pm, the 4BC figure has always included not just two-thirds of Gary Hardgrave’s 3-6pm program but also the hour-long Wide World of Sports from 6-7pm, which has dragged the average rating down. A breakdown suggests that the sport program has just about doubled its audience in the sapce of one survey, reducing its negative impact on Hardgrave’s numbers. He is now 4BC’s best daytime performer in terms of audience share.
(I’ll be very interested to see whether WWOS sustains its sudden gain in coming surveys. If not, a stewards’ inquiry may be required.)
The bad news for 4BC was on Saturdays, where Step Outside with Paul Burt had a shocker. The show’s share (somewhere between 5.6 and 5.8pc, according to slightly conflicting sources passed on to me in separate brown-paper bags) represents about a 2.5 point drop from the previous survey and is nearly half the rating the previous Weekend Breakfast show was scoring a year ago. 4BC’s official Weekend (5.30am-12midnight, Saturday and Sunday) figure is down from 6.4 a year ago to 5.2 now.
By contrast, I understand Spencer Howson at the ABC, who is on air from 5-10am on Saturdays, averaged around 14.5 in the 6-8am slot (when he’s head-to-head with “Burty”), with an overall average of 12.3 for his five hours on air.
Disclosure: Brett Debritz was the producer for Weekend Breakfast with Bill McDonald and Weekends with Spencer Howson at 4BC a few years ago and has recently been a guest on Spencer’s program on ABC Brisbane.
*An earlier version incorrectly said the ratings came out on Tuesday.