Australia’s most influential radio show has never had fewer listeners. The ABC’s audience problem is getting worse
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Today we explore yesterday’s radio ratings and drill into the performance of the ABC’s flagship network Radio National.
Radio National’s disappearing audience
It’s getting hard to justify one of the assumptions in the headline at the top of this article. Can a radio program which only averages 64,000 listeners across Australia’s five biggest cities really be the most influential?
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ABC NewsRadio breakfast (which I expect has a fraction the budget of its RN counterpart) pulls just under half a million nationwide. I’m not sure by what measure the ABC can claim the RN Breakfast Show is the “most influential” even within its own stable of stations.
Thanks for that point, Gavin.
In the interest of comparing apples with apples, it’s worth making the point that the data above is based on average audience (rather than cumulative audience).
Quickly crunching the numbers, it looks to me like NewsRadio’s average audience across the five city metro in that timeslot is 62,000, so about the same as RN breakfast.
In terms of cume, statisticians would have a heart attack if I simply added up the five city cume. But, doing so anyway, you’re correct that NewsRadio has the greater weekly reach – 1.033m vs RN’s 607,000.
All the best,
Tim