“I think we were all very enthusiastic about expectations early on,” Campbell says of Kyle and Jackie O’s entry in the Melbourne FM breakfast market.
Although the pair hit the Melbourne airwaves in late April, the most recent survey was the first in which they were on air during the entire ratings period. In the same day they celebrated 45 straight survey wins in the Sydney FM breakfast market, they stumbled to fifth place in Melbourne, behind not only Nova’s Jase and Lauren, the duo they bumped from KIIS 101.1’s Breakfast show, but other competitive shows from Gold, The FOX, and smoothfm, not to mention shows on talk stations ABC and 3AW over on the AM band. Kyle and Jackie O commanded a 6.1% market share, 3.8 points behind the FM leaders.
While it was a disappointing first strike, Campbell is diplomatic.
“The reality is, it is a new station, a new show for Melbourne, and while we in radio think about these things every day, the audience doesn’t, and there’s a lot of marketing noise down there, so trying to get cut through and get some people sampling us, it’s challenging when there’s so much marketing noise.”
ADVERTISEMENT
While Campbell notes the share went up this period, albeit by just 0.2%, he is realistic about the slow start.
“It is going to take a bit longer,” he admits of early expectations the pair would storm the market, “but for a show to rate so well in Sydney, it has to have some positive impact in Melbourne. It is going to take a bit longer than we first thought.”
Campbell explains that while he is constantly thinking of “what changes we could potentially make, or do we need to make any changes” when it comes to programming, one thing he has learned is not to “knee-jerk to survey results”, where one bad book spells doom.
“For example, Christian O’Connell had an unflattering book, I suppose,” he said. The popular GOLD Breakfast host fell from #1 to #3, which Campbell points out also happened at one stage last year. “It came back pretty quickly,” he recalls of O’Connell’s ratings dominance.
“We know there’s no product issue there, there’s no issues with the show, it’s just there was probably some issues, statistically, as it happens when you do surveys. I think that his top-of-mind awareness will be lower than normal because of the amount of marketing that’s been going on for SCA, for Nova, and for us with KIIS – and he hasn’t had that level [of marketing spend] in Melbourne.”
Campbell believes the flood of competing advertising for the Melbourne breakfast radio market has skewed the results away from what they are intended to measure: listenership.
“It’s been an onslaught really, for listeners,” he explains, “and they don’t think about radio like we do. When they get a diary and they’ve got to fill that in with all that noise coming at them, it’s like whatever is top of mind, really, at the time, and that’s how the recall methodology works. So [O’Connell] just didn’t get as many ticks as he would normally have got because Nova got more ticks than they probably would normally get.
Christian O’Connell
“The market hasn’t settled, and I don’t really expect that to settle until probably mid-next year, to be honest with you. I think there’ll be a lot of marketing until the end of the year that’s continuing, and then, over time, listeners will start to make up their minds, and they’ll start to get more familiar with Kyle and Jackie O, for example.”
Campbell points out there are five stations in Melbourne with a cume above a million.
“There’s a lot of floating cume going on,” he noted. “Listeners moving from station to station, switching and not settling yet. I hate the cliche, but it’s early days, you know?”
Campbell puts this fickle listenership down to the disruption in the breakfast market, with both KIIS and Nova launching new lineups, the latter snapping up Jase and Lauren after KIIS replaced then with Kyle and Jackie O.
“That’s quite a disruption,” he continues. “It causes audiences to move, and to rethink, and to try something new. So there’s a lot of trialing going on. Then you’ve got the marketing on top of that, which is driving people to sample other radio stations and rethink, and there’s PR from various shows as well. The market’s been disturbed in Melbourne, like probably hasn’t happened for quite a while.
“And cume, you just have to tick which stations you listen to for 15 minutes. So cumes are high, and they haven’t really settled. They will always be switching, by the way, but five stations above a million is a lot for Melbourne. It says to me that there’s a lot of undecided listeners who are really moving from station to station, and haven’t settled on their favourite radio station yet.”
This all bodes well for Kyle and Jackie O.
“Everything’s still up for grabs, I think,” Campbell says. “It’s not a Sydney-centric show, but for the Sydney audience – it’s not a new show. So they’re very familiar with it, the nuances, they all get.
“In Melbourne, the show hasn’t really been modified to accommodate for a secondary audience who doesn’t really know the show. That will take a bit longer for those listeners to understand the characters there, the producers, and how the show works, and get to know Kyle and Jackie O more.
“Even though they’re familiar as personalities, they’re not known as a radio team. They know the name, but they don’t know the person really, except for what they’ve probably heard in terms of the shock-jock persona and stuff like that, but there’s a lot more to the show than that.”
Duncan Campbell
ARN is banking on the show’s addictive nature to hook Melbourne, an addiction as evident to Campbell in those who purport to hate the show, as in those open fans.
“The one thing about the show is it does become addictive, once you get to understand the show, get involved in the show, you find yourself unable to turn it off. The more that happens over time, the share tends to build, and the show becomes more successful.”
As with everything worth while, these things take time.
“Radio is more of a background medium, generally,” Campbell reasons. “Obviously, the breakfast shows, it’s more foreground as well, but it’s the content that’s on the show. So it just takes time. It’s like a soap opera. It’s like Friends when it started. It builds over time and people get to understand the characters, and they’re very consistent.
“And there’s a lot more to Kyle and Jack than just the personas they’ve heard of, or the headlines. Kyle’s evolved a lot further on from just being the shock jock. There’s elements of that still in the show, but as you listen quite a lot, you hear a lot more dimension to it than just that these days.
“It’s a big show. It sounds big. Even those people who criticise it, they can tell me exactly what’s happening on the show, so they’re listening quite intently. And that’s the addictive element of that show. It’s one of those shows you can’t turn off.”