ARN’s Duncan Campbell talks being Australia’s #1 FM station and the ongoing impact of COVID-19
Yesterday saw the first radio ratings release since the service was paused in April. ARN national content director Duncan Campbell spoke with Mumbrella’s Hannah Blackiston about the results for the radio network and retaining the title of Australia’s number one national network.
Nobody really knew what to expect from GfK survey six. In Melbourne, it was obvious the results were likely to be disrupted – a full lockdown meant no regular working day and paper diaries were replaced completely by e-diaries – but for the other states the cliched ‘new normal’ has mostly begun. How would that impact the figures?
“To be honest, I was surprised. I thought there would have been a greater impact from the pandemic outside of Melbourne,” ARN’s national content director, Duncan Campbell tells me when I speak to him after the survey results are released.
“Radio listening nationally has remained flat in terms of total listening and we might have seen a shift in terms of home listening, in car listening and at work listening. The greatest impact was in Melbourne obviously, but even in Melbourne total listening was up 5%, so it’s an encouraging survey for the medium itself and I was just surprised there wasn’t more of an impact outside of Melbourne where we saw some significant cume shifts, particularly in breakfast.”
