Tuesdata: A set of ratings that makes killing season decisions harder
Welcome to a Tuesday edition of Unmade. The full post is for our paying members. Everyone else will hit a paywall further down.
Below, we look at a set of ratings that make decisions harder rather than easier for programmers deep into radio’s killing season.
Further down on the Unmade Index, the market treats Enero’s ASX update as bad news.
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The last set of ratings that matter
For a sixth and penultimate time in 2025, radio folk braced for today’s 9.30am release of the radio ratings. In most cases this will be the final data set before decisions are made on 2026 lineups. By the time Survey 7 is released on November 25, most hiring and firing will have been done. And Survey 8’s arrival on January 20 will be little more than a historical footnote.
Certainly it will be the last audience information available to the management of ARN Media before they hold their Upfronts in a fortnight from now.
Kiis decisions
So let’s start there.
If ARN was looking for more information on progress of Kiis FM’s The Kyle & Jackie O Show ahead of extending the networking beyond Sydney and Melbourne, today’s numbers didn’t particularly help. The average number of Sydney listeners dipped a little while Melbourne stood still. A third survey running with growth would have created more confidence.
Switching to ARN’s Gold FM, I was wrong to expect to see a jump in share for Jonesy & Amanda in Sydney. Brendan Jones and Amanda Keller’s victory lap before they shift to drive saw their share fall by 0.1 points to 8.1%.
Meanwhile Christian O’Connell – due to network into Sydney from next year – grew his Melbourne share for Gold FM from 10.1% to 10.9%, and tightened his grip on number one FM slot in the city.
2GB pulls out of nosedive
It was a much better set of numbers for Nine Radio’s 2GB in Sydney. Ben Fordham improved his breakfast share by an impressive 2.6 points to 16.8%, and in the process moved back past The Kyle & Jackie O Show (down from 15.3% to 13.6%) for the city’s top show.
And 2GB’s shows all improved. The morning slot was up 3.4 ratings points, afternoons were up by 1.6 and in drive, Clinton Maynard was up by 2.6 points.
Where that’s enough to save Maynard remains to be seen, but it certainly makes for a trickier decision.
SCA’s rough round
For Southern Cross Austereo, Sydney is not a happy city. 2DayFM’s Jimmy Smith, Nath Roye and Emma Chow saw their breakfast share sink to 3.6%, even falling behind the ABC’s Triple J. But is it too soon to axe the show? Another tricky decision.
And Triple M Sydney’s breakfast team of Beau Ryan, Aaron Woods and Cat Lynch saw their share drop to 4.9%, despite NRL finals season usually being a strong period for the network.
Things were a little better for SCA in Melbourne where Fox grew its breakfast and daytime audience, although Triple M also went backwards.
Nova’s Sydney decision gets harder
If the speculation is correct that Nova is contemplating a change for its Sydney breakfast show then Fitzy and Wippa didn’t make that decision any easier. The show’s share rose to 8.6%, taking it to second place FM show which is as good as I can remember it.
Counting the ABC votes
The survey period included lots of audience involvement for the ABC’s national networks.
Youth network Triple J ran the Hottest 100 Australian Songs on July 26, while current affairs and culture network Radio National kicked off voting for the top Australian books of the 21st century.
One stat I’m not sure what to do with is the fact that more people voted for Triple J’s Hottest 100 Australian Songs than tuned into the network.
Across the five capital cities, Triple J’s total Monday to Sunday cumulative audience – in other words, the number of people who tuned in at least once, for more than seven minutes at some point during the week – was 1.824m. Triple M’s average five-city listening was 108,000.
Yet the number of people who voted in the Hottest 100 Australian Songs was 2.65m.
Meanwhile, the cume number for Radio National was 490,000, with average listening of 24,000.
Yet RN recorded 287,990 favourite book votes.
Whether that speaks to the power of audience votes, or the weakness of the two networks’ listening numbers I’m not entirely sure.
However, what is true is that Radio National’s breakfast show saw its biggest one-survey jump in audience numbers since the early days of Covid.
During the period spanning 5.30am and 9am, which features Radio National Breakfast with Sally Sara, alongside Sabra Lane’s AM sandwiched in the middle, the network’s average five-city audience was above 50,000 for the first time this year.
More bad news from Enero on the Unmade Index
ASX investors today gave greater weight to Enero’s bad news about its PR agency Hotwire than good news about ad agency BMF and digital agency Orchard.
In a market update, Enero said Hotwire’s quarterly EBITDA profits had fallen by $0.9m while BMF’s had grown by $0.6m and Orchard by $0.5m. Enero also disclosed that Hotwire’s global CEO Heather Kernahan has departed, with a new boss to be revealed in the coming weeks.
Enero stocks sank by 3.9% taking the company down to a market capitalisation of $68m.
Elsewhere on the Unmade Index, SCA stocks lost 4.6%, taking the company back below a $200m market cap while merger partner Seven West Media lost 3.6%, dropping it to a $208m market cap.
The Unmade Index lost 0.54%, landing on 478.8 points for the day.
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We’ll be back tomorrow with a first take on the Nine Upfronts.
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Have a great night.
Toodlepip…
Tim Burrowes
Publisher – Unmade + Mumbrella
tim@unmade.media
Hi Tim. I think I can help explain the ABC conundrum.
The ‘radio survey’ spans many weeks and calculates the average across that period of time. The survey sample’s respondents report for one week, and then the six weeks of responses are accumulated and then averaged. The Hottest 100 is based on the one day of July 26.