‘Our strategy for every station is on track’: SCA crows over 25-54 numbers
Mid-way through 2021, Southern Cross Austereo became the most dominant radio network in the important 25-54 metro demographic, a position it has held ever since. As chief content officer Dave Cameron tells Mumbrella, it’s a lucrative market to target – especially when you hit the bullseye.
“31 surveys in a row,” Cameron says, of SCA’s streak, driven by its Hit and Triple M networks. “And, while I’d like every single person in every market to listen to our stations – we call it ‘the audience that matters’, because that’s where we’re writing 80% of our revenue – off this core 25-54 demographic.”
This week’s radio ratings saw SCA nudge its network share in this prized demographic to 26.2%. With the addition of the 21 stations in the Ace Radio network, for which SCA handles national sales representation, this figure jumps to 35.7%.
Regardless of how you split it, using this metric, SCA sit ahead of both Nova — which commands 21.6% of the market through its flagship stations and Smooth — and ARN’s 20.8% share (KIIS is its big play in this market).
“To keep not only dominating, but to extend that leadership, means that our strategy for every station is on track,” Cameron says. “It means that we’re investing in the right talent in all of the markets, whether they’re heritage talent or whether they’re brand new talent. I feel like our strategy is absolutely firing at the moment with that core demographic.”
Dave Cameron
Despite leading this demographic, SCA didn’t have a perfect survey. The third book of 2025 saw Triple M in Sydney take a 1.5 point hit in the ratings, with its Breakfast show, led by Beau Ryan and Aaron “Woodsy” Woods dropping by the same percentage. Fox FM in Melbourne and B105 in Brisbane also saw slight listener drops, although Fox’s Melbourne breakfast show, lead by Fifi Box, gained 0.6% in the most competitive radio slot in the country.
A recent move to aim younger with 2DayFM in Sydney has resulted in slight audience increases over the past two surveys. Triple M remained the top station in Brisbane, gained 1.4 points in Perth, and saw its Melbourne drive show, The Rush Hour with JB and Billy, achieve the station’s best share percentage in this time slot since mid 2006 – albeit, a modest 10.6%.
There’s room to improve, which Cameron acknowledges.
“Not every show fires straight away, and that’s okay,” Cameron says of some of the network’s slower starters.
“But I’m really proud of the investment and the decisions we’re making around bringing new talent through, whether that’s brand new shows coming aboard, or Mick in the Morning in Melbourne, with a couple of new stars.
“I think we’re the only company at the moment that is investing in new talent with a really clear focus on that talent being locally connected to the audiences in that market.”
Localism is a major focus for SCA, Cameron says, and it helps with artfully tying in sponsorship that makes sense in the context of each city.
Mick Molloy
“We’re very family-friendly and we’re highly commercially integrated,” he says. “So, we embrace the opportunity to bring clients into our products. We’re smart about the way we integrate commercially. We’re trying to build new products and just not resting on shows that have been around for a long time. We’re really trying to make bold changes where we can.”
‘Bold’ doesn’t need to mean ‘divisive’. This brings us to the final — and perhaps, most vital — point of difference for SCA. As Cameron repeats, they are a “family-friendly” radio network.
This sets the network up as the alternative to headline-magnets like ARN’s Kyle and Jackie O, who were recently found to have breached the decency standards of the commercial radio code of practice, after hundreds of complaints to the communications watchdog.
Cameron has been outspoken on this issue numerous times, telling Mumbrella last May he believes Australia has “the most extreme radio industry in the world” in terms of content regulation.
In a separate conversation a few months later, he told Mumbrella he doesn’t involve himself in “the trash talk and the hyperbole of our competitor alpha male talent, who seemingly want to try and mansplain how to do good radio,” saying that “Kyle and Jack … has been met largely with a combination of ambivalence from the Melbourne audience, and extreme concern from clients that don’t necessarily want to invest commercial dollars in that show, which I think is a concern for them”.
By the end of 2024, he was allegedly no longer considering ARN a competitor at all, saying: “You’re really only competitors if you play the same game. We’re not. We’re playing a game of local engagement, family-friendly, brand-safe, being a part of our communities and, you know – one of our ‘competitors’ is playing a game of audio porn.”
At the end of the day, Cameron is focused on the ‘commercial’ part of commercial radio.
“Really, we do aim as a company broadly, from a corporate point of view, to have the most profitable shows in the country,” he says.
“And, I think we’re well on the way to delivering that. It would be fair to say there’s some pretty big shows in the industry now that are no longer profitable,” he says, without elaborating.
“So, I think that’s a good focus for us to continue to have.”
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Nathan Jolly is the Features Editor at Mumbrella. He joined the team in July, 2023.
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