Smoothfm pledges marketing push as CEO reveals only 30% of listeners know it is on air

Tim Burrowes

June 21, 2013 12:39

DMG’s new light music network smoothfm is to get a marketing boost, the CEO of the radio company has pledged.

Cathy O’Connor, CEO of DMG, made the comments at a party in Sydney to mark the first anniversary of smoothfm which is on FM in Sydney and Melbourne and on digital radio elsewhere. She conceded that only 30 per cent of potential listeners are aware the station exists and pledged to up marketing spend. Since launch the network has had only minimal marketing.

The network – the brainchild of programming director Paul Jackson – replaced the short-lived Classic Rock which in turn replaced Vega.

O’Connor said: “Let’s face it, we’d had a couple of cracks up until this point. We knew that only a really focused and different concept was going to cut through.”

Subscribe to keep reading

Join Mumbrella Pro to access the Mumbrella archive and read our premium analysis of everything under the media and marketing umbrella.

Tim Burrowes

Tim Burrowes is the publisher of Mumbrella and Unmade. He co-founded Mumbrella in 2008 and sister title Unmade in 2021. He's worked in the UK, Middle East, Asia & Australia and has specialised in writing about the communications world for the last 25 years. He wrote the book Media Unmade, published in 2021, and became the presenter of MediaLand on ABC Radio National in 2025.