SCA boss says local talent is ‘critical’ in 2025 and slams competitors for ‘playing game of audio porn’
SCA is focusing on locally loved breakfast lineups across each state, as it learns from the speculator failure of its major competitor.
“Breakfast localism, for us, is critical – and it’s everything,” SCA chief content officer Dave Cameron declares. “It will be our very strong approach for next year.”
This has certainly been borne out by the rush of programming changes announced in the past few weeks across Triple M’s slate of Breakfast shows.
Melbourne native Mick Molloy will hop from Sydney Breakfast to Melbourne, where he will helm Mick In The Morning With Roo Titus and Rosie, alongside Titus O’Reily, Nick Riewoldt, and Rosie Walton. In Sydney, Penrith Panthers legend and Triple M veteran Mark Geyer has lost his Breakfast slot, being replaced with former NRL player and host of The Amazing Race Australia Beau Ryan, news presenter Natarsha Belling, and former West Tigers captain, Aaron Woods.
Triple M Gold will install three Queenslanders into Breakfast: Peter ‘Spida’ Everitt, Leisel Jones, and Liam Flanagan, with the latter two graduating from The Rush Hour, while Xavier Ellis and Katie Lamb will take over the Perth Breakfast show.
“You will notice that we are engaging new talent in markets that we know are well-loved in each of those cities,” Cameron explains of the strategy.
“We will design programming for all of our metro markets that deliver on local audience engagement and will also be highly commercially attractive as well.”
The Melbourne FM breakfast market was a bellwether for Australian radio in 2024.
Three different shows occupied the top ratings slot across the year. Christian O’Connell’s GOLD show started its sixth year on air in Melbourne secure in its top spot, but soon lost the crown to Fifi, Fev & Nick on FOX FM, who launched a splashy campaign leaning into its local focus, declaring the show ‘Melbourne’s Biggest Party’, and showing the trio casually partying across multiple Melbourne locales.
While the two shows battled it out, Jason Hawkins and Lauren Phillips on NOVA leapfrogged the pair to win Survey 5 in August, a victory made all the sweeter by the failure of interstate interlopers Kyle and Jackie O on KIIS 101.1 – who dislodged the pair from their KIIS Breakfast slot, spent millions launching into the Melbourne Breakfast market, and then ended the year in fifth place on the FM Breakfast dial, with just 5% share – a mere 0.7 points above SEN’s sports talk radio over on ABC.
Cameron is blunt when asked what drove the focus on local talent.
“What drove that is audience demanding to hear local voices at breakfast time. I think you’ve seen the out-and-out failure, with breakfast audiences completely rejecting interstate offerings, and wanting to hear locally loved personalities.
“That’s what’s driven our strategy and we’re really comfortable with that. Not only are we comfortable with that, we’re actually leaning into that.
“We’ve established talent — a combination of established talent and bringing new voices through the industry — to continue to evolve and grow the audience pile for radio. We feel like we’re really not only embracing that, but pioneering the fact of bringing new voices in – because no one else seems to be doing that.
“It’s important for the industry to actually be able to continue to regenerate itself with new voices.”
Fifi, Fev, and Nick
I bring up the strategy of inserting “interstate offerings” into Melbourne breakfast taken by SCA’s main competitor, only to have Cameron bristle at the term.
“I mean, you’re really only competitors if you play the same game,” Cameron declares. “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.
“We’re not at all playing the same game.”
Using my best journalistic nous, I make a few leaps of logic, connect a few dots, and wager that Cameron was referring to the “graphic sexual content” on the Kyle and Jackie O Show on KIIS, content that Greens senator Sarah Hanson-Young described in parliament last month as being “revolting, sexist, racist, misogynistic, divisive stuff on free to air radio from 6am in the morning”.
In July, Cameron gave ARN and Sandilands a spraying, telling 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,” adding: “Kyle and Jack coming into this market 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”.
Dave Cameron
To his credit, ARN chief Duncan Campbell largely agreed with this assessment, telling Mumbrella after the pair tanked another survey in mid-November that Sandilands had agreed to “the removal of the graphic sexual content” in a bid to “reset and help change perceptions”.
“He wants to win in Melbourne,” Campbell said. “There’s no doubt about that.”
Speaking again to Mumbrella again last week following the final books rating of the year, where Kyle and Jackie O has slipped further down the ratings, Campbell reiterated this plan for 2025.
“There’s obviously a real job to do there, and I’m not shying away from that.” Campbell said the final six weeks of shows, following the earlier chat with Mumbrella “were really back to being reflective of the Kyle and Jackie O show that we know.
“The explicit sexual content was gone, and it was back to being really engaging content – funny at times, as well.”
While Campbell is busy “changing people’s perceptions of the show” at ARN, over at SCA, Cameron is determined his local Breakfast strategy will pay off.
“I think people, just behaviourally, want to wake up and feel connected to their city,” he reasons. “They want to feel connected to what’s happened in their town. They want to hear people they are familiar with, talking about the stuff in their backyard, that is related to them.
“It’s just a natural, personal need-state at breakfast time that you don’t wake up in the morning wanting to know what’s happened in New York.”
Campbell says that local focus has always been the cornerstone of the medium. “It’s something radio has done exceptionally well at in the past, and it’s something that we will continue to embrace, because we believe — and actually can wholeheartedly say now — that’s what audiences want.
“That’s what they’re telling us, and they’re rejecting anything that is not that.”
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Nathan Jolly is the Features Editor at Mumbrella. He joined the team in July, 2023.
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Beau Ryan
Christian O'Connell
Dave Cameron
Fev & Nick
Fifi
Jase and Lauren
Katie Lamb
Kyle and Jackie O
Mark Geyer
Mick In The Morning With Roo Titus and Rosie
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Nick Riewoldt
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Rosie Walton
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Titus O'Reily
triple M
Xavier Ellis
What a joke. This is a network that slashed almost all local talent from its regional network and axed local talent from Triple M drive. The only reason Mick Molloy is going back to Melbourne is because the falilure of K&J has left a gap he’s hoping Triple M can fill. But for SCA to call local talent ‘critical’ is utter hypocrisy.
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Re: @damo
Localism is localism whether metro or regional, and SCA has slashed the level of local talent across both. As someone who worked in regional radio, I’d argue it’s more important in regional areas. Either way, SCA’s attitude is hypocritical and this story is pure PR spin from their new external comms agency (the one that took over after SCA axed their own comms team).
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From what I can see Damo he talks about Metro markets, and Breakfast specifically.
You talk about Regional, and Drive. But good stuff trying to draw parallels to drum up some confused outrage Damo! Do you also hate Christmas because of the Easter Eggs?
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