Radio industry hits the half way point – what we learned in the new metro numbers
Welcome to a midweek update from Unmade: Today, five details you might have missed from yesterday’s new metro radio ratings. And a storming recovery for ARN Media and Enero on the Unmade Index.
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Five things you might (or might not) have noticed about the radio ratings
Tim Burrowes writes:
The radio industry hit its half way point for 2023 yesterday, with the release of the fourth of the year’s eight metro surveys.
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I get so annoyed by people who don’t understand the ratings system. Average audience figures are for advertisers. The ABC doesn’t take ads. You clearly don’t understand radio ratings.
Hi Unimpressed,
Thanks for your feedback. Having spent the last 17 years since I started writing about the Australian media industry poring over each release of the ratings, and before that doing the same thing in the UK, I must be slow to understand indeed
Unmade primarily looks at the media world through a commercial lens, so when we look at the ABC, one of the dimensions we consider is its place as a strong competitor (or otherwise) to its commercial counterparts, who prioritise average listening
That said, I’ve only noticed ABC people become particularly strident about cume being the only number that counts, since it found itself in deep trouble on average listening numbers.
Both cume and average listening are important measures of performance. As a believer in public service broadcasting, I wish the ABC was doing better in either one.