Melbourne radio ratings: Fox increases FM drive lead with 11% audience share
Southern Cross Austereo’s Fox FM has maintained its drive lead for the seventh radio ratings survey of the year, with the combination of Carrie Bickmore and Tommy Little, followed by Dave ‘Hughesy’ Hughes and Kate Langbroek growing 0.5 ratings points.
Bickmore, Little, Hughes and Langbroek managed a drive audience share of 11%, well ahead of Smooth FM’s Byron Webb who managed a 9.6% audience share.
Melbourne radio ratings survey 7 2018. Total audience share. Source: GfK (Click to enlarge)
Hot on the heels of Smooth second place position in the FM battle is Gold 104.3’s Gavin Miller. Despite a slight drop from 9.7% to 9.5%, Gold 104.3 still managed to clearly beat Nova 100’s Kate Ritchie, Tim Blackwell and Marty Sheargold.
Nova 100 did however jump 0.3 ratings points to an 8.4% drive audience share.
Coming in fifth place for the hotly contended FM drive battle was Triple M with Mick Molloy and Jane Kennedy, as the duo gained 0.4 ratings points from its previous 7.1% share.
Meanwhile, Kiis FM struggled to keep up with its rival FM stations as Will McMahon and Woody Whitelaw fell 0.4 points to a 5.7% drive share. ABC-owned radio station Triple J managed to tie with Kiis FM, even though it dropped 0.8 points.
In the overall drive-time battle, including the AM stations, 3AW came in second to Fox FM with a 10.6% share. ABC Melbourne managed to climb one whole point to an 8.5% share, putting the AM station ahead of Nova, Triple M and Kiss FM.
Macquarie Sports Radio, which was previously Talking Lifestyle, fell 0.5 points back down to an audience share of 0.5%.
The breakfast battle also saw success for the popular Fox FM as Fifi Box, Brendan Fevola and Byron Cooke once again took out the top FM spot.
‘Fifi, Fev and Byron’ did decrease in ratings points, however, dropping from a 9.6% share last survey to 9% in survey seven.
Smooth FM’s Jennifer Hanson and Mike Perso came in behind ‘Fifi, Fev and Byron’ with an 8.1% share, remaining fairly stagnant from last survey’s 8.2% share.
Third place went to Gold 10.43’s Christian O’Connell as he climbed 1.2 points from 6.7% to this survey’s 7.9% share.
Behind Gold 104.3 was Triple M’s ‘Hot breakfast team’ Eddie McGuire, Wil Anderson and Luke Darcy as they held their 7.7% share.
Nova’s Chrissie Swan, Sam Pang and Jonathan Brown lost 0.2 ratings points to a 7.6% share, while Kiis FM’s Jase Hawkins and Polly ‘PJ’ Harding struggled again with a 5.5% share, dropping 0.4 points.
Taking the AM stations into consideration 3AW was the most listened to breakfast segment overall with a whopping 19.8% share, growing even more from last survey’s 18.4% share.
ABC Melbourne was the second most listened to station overall with its 10.4% breakfast audience share.
Meanwhile, the struggling Macquarie Sports Radio remained on its 0.2% audience share.
Melbourne radio ratings survey 7 2018. Source: GfK
For the FM stations, Smooth FM was again the most popular across the Melbourne market, even though it fell 0.1 ratings points.
Fox FM gained 0.1 points and tied with Gold 104.3, which increased 0.2 points to 9.5%.
Triple M was third thanks to a 0.6 point improvement from 6.5% to 7.1%. Trailing Triple M in the FM battle was Nova with a 6.7% share.
Despite losing ratings points in the drive battle and staying stagnant in breakfast, Kiss FM grew 0.2 points in overall audience share to 5.6%.
Including the AM stations, 3AW was again the most listened to radio station with a 14.5% share, jumping one whole ratings point.
ABC Melbourne also saw a large share of 9.4% as Macquarie Sports Radio lost 0.2 points to a 0.2% overall audience share.
Abigail Dawson was Mumbrella's senior content journalist covering event content. She left Mumbrella to move into an agency role in 2020.
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No longer can I listen to ABC Melbourne breakfast radio. It’s extremely difficult to understand the male member of the duo presenters! It is unpleasant & challenging listening, far from enjoyable!
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Jan 14th 2019 Yes Phillip is correct find ABC Melbourne breakfast radio has been very enjoyable to listen too over holiday period now find that as off Jan 21st will have to change stations for the 2hours 15 mins of breakfast due to the unpleasant and far from enjoyable presenters of the breakfast radio it’s the only time my radio is not tuned to ABC always wake before 5.30 AM to change stations for the first time in my memory have always been 24/7 listener of ABC but no more
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