Tuning in to the latest radio ratings
What the survey tells us about the state of the stations. Plus: Kyle Sandilands’ exit threat, job losses at ARN and Foxtel, and the perils of political punditry.
The results of the second 2025 GfK radio ratings survey — covering listening between February 9 and March 1, and March 9 and April 12 — have been released.
Here are what I see as the highlights:
The top takeaway is who won the biggest audience share. Overall, it’s Triple M, with a 12.9pc audience share, displacing its stablemates at B105 (11.3), which is now third behind Nova (11.7) and just ahead of KIIS (11.1) in a tight field. Triple M’s numbers were boosted by solid gains in Drive (3.2 points to a 12.9 share) and Evenings (an incredible 5.5 points to 12.2).
In the all-important Breakfast shift, Nova is now No.1 with a 13.6 share ahead of both B105 and Triple M (equal on 13.2) and KIIS (12.0). It seems the addition of Nikki Osborne to the team of Ash Bradnam and David “Luttsy” Lutteral has paid off for Nova. However, I expect those numbers to dance around a lot during the year. Keen competition among the music stations keeps everyone on their toes and is good for listeners.
KIIS 973 had a healthy 1.3-point rise overall and was up 0.7 points in Breakfast with Robin Bailey, Kip Wightman and Corey Oates.
At the other end of the pack, news-talk 4BC had a 0.5-point increase to 4.9pc overall and a rise of 0.7 points in Breakfast with Peter Fegan, to 5.2pc, but it’s still off the pace. Those increases may be due to a busy news period, with bad weather and the first two weeks of the federal election campaign falling during the survey. The challenge will be to sustain and build on them.
Drive and Wide World of Sports continue to underperform at 4BC. Although the publicly available figures don’t break down Weekend listening, I’m told numbers for Step Outside with Paul Burt on Saturday and Sunday mornings are up on the first survey this year, despite — or, perhaps, because of — publicity surrounding Burt’s association with Ranger Nick Smalls, who made a disgraceful comment about wife beating on the Step Outside TV show. I believe Burt’s Saturday figures are lower than the equivalent period last year for the previous Weekend Breakfast show.
ABC Brisbane remains ahead of 4BC and is steady overall on 6.6 but down 0.4 points in Breakfast with Loretta Ryan and Craig Zonca to 7.9.
4BH ratings dropped overall from 9.4 to 8.1, and Breakfast was down to 8.5, which is still healthy for an AM music station and ahead of 4BC and the ABC.
In Sydney, 2GB is No.1 overall and in Breakfast with Ben Fordham. Among music stations, Smooth FM is ahead of KIIS but the Kyle and Jackie O Show (of which more below) led in Breakfast despite having lost a point. Mark Levy, who replaced Ray Hadley in Mornings for 2GB, has put on a healthy 2.0 points for a rating of 15.5.
In Melbourne, the winners were 3AW (despite a 2.7 point overall drop) and Gold (thanks to a 0.5 increase).
Mister Brisbane is free to read, but if you appreciate what I’m doing here, and/or
at The Wrinkle and Radio Bert, you can buy me a coffee.
Is Kyle a goner?
Kyle Sandilands says he’ll drop out of the Melbourne radio market by the end of the year if ratings for his KIIS show don’t improve. (They did improve this survey, from 5.1 to 5.8, but his show remains well behind the commercial pack and rates around half the numbers of his direct competitors at Nova.)
This proclamation came amid reports that ARN — which owns the KIIS Network but has apparently ceded control of the Kyle and Jackie O Show to Sandilands as part of his eye-popping contract — is again cutting costs, outsourcing some activities overseas at the price of about 70 Australian jobs.
I would ask how Sandilands sleeps at night knowing another big batch of his colleagues are facing the axe partly to sustain his huge salary and hubris, but I’ve already answered that question in this very sentence.
Sandilands is talented, but he has displayed contempt for decency standards, and the mechanisms put in place to keep him from crossing the line of good taste have proved ineffective. The show still rates well in Sydney, but its advertisers are under pressure to withdraw due to the activities of the Mad F—king Witches lobby group. And the watchdog, ACMA, is expected to impose further penalties on ARN and the show over breaches of the industry code.
I reckon there’s a strong chance ARN will cash in its chips and Sandilands and Jackie Henderson will be out of the network altogether by the end of the year. And they’ll get their enormous payout because somebody at ARN will finally decide that tackling the problem head-on is preferable to death by a thousand cuts.
Meanwhile, new owner DAZN has announced about 100 job losses at Foxtel. It’s not a great time to work in, or wish to work in, the media.
How to vote?
A social media post from a former colleague reminds me that many media organisations — newspapers and some radio stations — will be running editorials telling their readers or listeners how to vote.
This is fraught at the best of times. But when you can’t afford to lose any more of your audience, you’d have to wonder whether there is any value in coming down strongly on one side. (I was going to end that sentence “or the other” but, let’s face it, they are all going to come down on the one side.)
It may be a power trip for the owners and managers of these outfits to try to influence the outcome of an election, but I don’t think it’s a very sound business practice.
State of the arts
Congratulations to Brisbane Festival artistic director Louise Bezzina on her appointment to the top job at the Brisbane Powerhouse, replacing Kate Gould, who has a big gig in Adelaide,
As The Sunday Mail noted on the weekend, the news came via the festival’s new “publicity partner”, a Melbourne-based company called Common State.
Common State’s appointment came at the expense of local PR outfit Aruga, which has gathered as clients the lion’s share of arts organisations in Brisbane over the past few years.
I guess that’s a sign of the times. However, I’m old enough to remember when all the arts companies had their own PR people — which meant they had somebody who was exclusively batting for their team.
But, then again, I’m also old enough to remember when it was only journalists and people who worked in communications and marketing who needed to know, or even cared, who represented whom.
Disclosure: Brett Debritz has worked in the media, including at NewsCorp and Nine Radio. During this survey period he was heard on the ABC.