Cocky little chancers, and an ABC data dump
Welcome to Best of the Week, written on a blustery morning in Evandale, Tasmania. You can keep your Sydney 35 degrees. I think I prefer my 14.
Today: The ABC publishes its podcast data (and slaughters a sacred cow); and chancers get comeuppances.
Happy National Chocolate-Covered Anything Day,
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The ABC makes a start on changing its audio trajectory
You have to start somewhere, and this week came a couple of tangible signs that the ABC has started to address its audio decline.
The ABC finally, finally joined the Australian Podcast Ranker. A mere five years, one month and 25 days after ABC managing director David Anderson said it would do so “in the next couple of months”, it finally happened on Thursday morning.
And this week the ABC also announced the departure of longtime Triple J boss Richard Kingsmill.
Let’s start with the latest ranker, which covers November’s numbers.
We know now in more detail than has been previously available, the state of the commercial sector’s biggest competitor for Australian eardrums.
I had expected the ABC to be the biggest podcast publisher. In fact, by the metric of monthly listeners, it’s third.
ARN’s iHeart is top, with 4.8m monthly listeners; Southern Cross Austereo’s Listnr is next with 3.6m, and the ABC is third with 2.6m.
I have a hunch that there may still be some quirks in the reporting systems. For monthly downloads, the ABC’s 28.8m is easily top,outstripping iHeart’s 18.7m and Listnr’s 10.1m
The numbers suggest that those who do stream ABC podcasts do so in high volume – on average more than 11 monthly downloads apiece. iHeart averages four and Listnr three.
Meanwhile, the metric of sales representation – not that the ABC takes ads of course – suggests a much closer race for monthly downloads. The wider network repped by ARN did 25.7m monthly downloads, just ahead of SCA’s 25.5m. That makes the ABC’s 28.8m a much closer thing.
The data also offers insights into the ABC’s biggest audio assets.
Conversations, presented by Richard Fidler and Sarah Kanowski, is the most significant for the ABC by a long way, with half a million monthly listeners and 5.5m monthly downloads. That places it fifth in the overall ranker behind Hamish & Andy; Casefile True Crime, Shameless and Mamamia Out Loud.
Among the ABC’s shows, next comes ABC News Daily with 385,000 monthly listeners. Third is Matt Bevan’s world news explainer If You’re Listening.
Meanwhile Norman Swan and Tegan Taylor are the only team to appear twice in the top ten with Radio National’s Health Report and the reboot of Coronacast, What’s That Rash.
As I say, that was not the only tangible sign that the ABC is finally making much needed changes to its audio output. The impact and reach isn’t good enough considering the resources poured into its operations.
This week, creating a new verb, Triple J announced it had “farewelled” group music director Richard Kingsmill. It later emerged it was a redundancy.
It was over time. The idea that the musical direction of a network aimed at 18 to 24-year-olds should be led by somebody three times that age had become silly, no matter the passion and expertise Kingsmill brought to it.
It’s possible to have been both a good servant to Australian music (Mumbrella’s Nathan Jolly makes that point well today), and for it to be (past) time for a change. For one person to have that much power over Australian music for that long was not healthy. He should have had a show, not a network.
Kingsmill’s exit is the biggest move yet from head of audio Ben Latimer who joined less than five months ago after leading Nova’s programming.
Up to now, much of Latimer’s focus has been on the underperforming ABC city stations. In Sydney James Valentine has been moved out of the breakfast chair in favour of Craig Reucassel; in Melbourne, Rafael Epstein moved to mornings and Ali Moore took the slot in drivetime.
One place I’d been expecting to see bigger changes, which don’t seem to have arrived yet, is ABC Radio National. so far, it’s been another year of decline, including for the flagship RN Breakfast.
One of the benefits of a fresh start is that it’s possible to move on from denying there’s a problem, which was the approach for the last couple of years. Latimer acknowledged in an interview with Nine’s newspapers earlier this month that RN is on his radar too: “We have to be engaging with a share above the current 1.4 per cent on linear radio, we just have to be.”
I suspect those changes to RN are coming. The final ratings of the year drop on Tuesday. That might be the day to slip out another announcement or two.
A bad week for cocky little chancers
I was not at all sorry to read on Thursday that Phillip Kingston has been made bankrupt. It came as fallout from his failed Sargon superannuation venture.
I crossed paths with Kingston in my time with Mumbrella. When Kingston was trying to put together the float of Trimantium Growthops, we published an opinion piece predicting that the project – a roll up of several agencies – would be a disaster for investors. He sued us for defamation. As part of a pre-trial settlement, our insurer insisted we take down the article. The float went ahead. The project turned out to be lucrative for Kingston but a disaster for investors.
And speaking of chancers, overnight came a setback for the reputation of Piers Morgan, whose Piers Morgan Uncensored show can be found in Australia on Sky News
The former editor of The Mirror newspaper in the UK, he celebrated his promotion to the role back in 2001 by saying “this is a great day for cocky little chancers”.
Overnight, a British judge came to a view on long running questions about what Morgan knew about phone hacking during his time with the Mirror. As part of a $250,000 ruling in favour of Prince Harry, the judge ruled that the Prince’s phone was hacked on behalf of The Mirror. “There could be “no doubt”, said the judge, that Morgan knew.
The ruling puts huge pressure on British authorities to reinvestigate the behaviour of The Mirror at the time. The phone hacking scandal led to the demise of News Corp’s News of the World and prison sentences for some of their staff. No such consequences visited those from The Mirror. Until now.
Unmade Index loops the mobius loop
The Unmade Index finished the week almost exactly where it started, after rising by 0.32% on Friday to close at 607.2 points
Seven, Ooh Media and IVE Group all rose by around 2%, while Southern Cross Austereo was up 1.55%. Domain, ARN Media and Pureprofile were the only media and marketing stocks to fall.
Campaign of the Week:
In each edition of BOTW, our friends at Little Black Book Online highlight their most interesting advertising campaign of the week.
LBB’s ANZ reporter Casey Martin writes:
TBWA Melbourne has taken a childhood classic, Winnie The Pooh, and transformed him into a reminder that actions matter. The work for toilet paper brand Who Gives A Crap reimagines one of A. A. Milne’s iconic stories of the honey loving bear, Winnie The Pooh to show the damage that would be imposed onto Hundred Acre Woods, if action is not taken to start to take care of the world we live in.
The book itself is made from 100% recycled paper and includes images of Winnie’s home slowly disappearing.
Almost time to leave you to your weekend.
Before I do, let me flag the piece we published midweek, which not only set out the dates for our events next year, but also made the case for why it makes sense to become a paying member of Unmade. There are big savings to be made, but only if you sign up in the next six days.
Abe Udy and I will be back on Monday with our final Start the Week podcast of the year.
Have a great weekend.
Toodlepip…
Tim Burrowes
Publisher – Unmade
