Welcome to InDaily’s new weekly column – Media Week – in which we’ll explore everything to do with the news business, advertising, PR and marketing in South Australia and further afield.
Today, one of Adelaide’s best journalists joins InDaily , we look at the rise to dominance of ABC radio in Adelaide, inside Uber’s smart marketing, advertising gaffes and a TV veteran calls it a day.
ABC radio’s slow road to the top
It’s happened so gradually, so incrementally, that it still seems astonishing to see ABC radio near the top of Adelaide’s radio ratings.
But, here we are, with the once-powerful SAFM rebranding to try to regain listeners, FIVEaa fiddling with its sports show to regain relevance, and once-dry old Aunty vying for top spot with adult pop station Mix.
In the crucial breakfast slot – well, crucial, if you’re a commercial operation – ABC 891 is a consistent winner thanks to the Matt and Dave juggernaut. In the last survey, 891 was second only to Mix – and when you add together the collective ratings of the ABC stations, it’s clear we’re Aunty’s town.
We thought it would be interesting to track the ABC’s radio ratings over time. Below is the performance of 891 since 1991, and the cumulative ratings performance of all ABC stations in Adelaide over the same period.
You can see the trend is inexorably upwards (with a few interesting dips and spikes, such as 1992, when the news agenda was dominated by the State Bank collapse). This year’s figure for 891 and all stations is likely to be higher than that recorded here (which was compiled by the ABC at end of survey three).
The ABC stations (apart from Triple J) all do very well in the older demographics. So the question for commercial radio operators is whether the ageing of Adelaide’s population, and some deft programming choices by Aunty’s local minions, means that ABC dominance is the new reality.
We’ll update these figures at the end of the year.
InDaily’s big appointments
I can promise readers that we won’t make a habit of in-house news – but these two InDaily appointments are significant.
Former Helpmann Academy CEO Amanda Pepe has joined us as publisher of InDaily. Amanda is a former editor of The Adelaide Review.
Founding publisher Paul Hamra is still running the overall show for Solstice Media, InDaily’s owner, but Amanda will be focused solely on building the InDaily business.
And in exciting news for InDaily readers, award-winning journalist Tom Richardson will be joining us full-time from January 2015.
Richardson will leave Channel Nine after nine years to become part of InDaily’s daily reporting team as a senior journalist.
He will be familiar to regular readers, thanks to his popular and influential Friday political column, which has appeared in InDaily from the beginning – and will continue to appear after he joins the team full-time.
Tom previously worked for The Australian and The Advertiser, and was named South Australia’s Journalist of the Year in 2011.
Amanda Pepe and Tom Richardson
Not so invisible
It’s hard to imagine a worse placement of a bus ad than this one, brought to us by reader Tim Hodges, via Twitter.
Some local knowledge was desperately needed here.
The agonising death of print
The latest Roy Morgan newspaper readership figures make worrying reading for those who like print newspapers.
Across the country, newspapers enjoyed rises in digital audiences (indeed, InDaily enjoyed its highest two months of readership ever in September and October).
But the September figures show widespread falls in print readership, except for a few notable exceptions.
In South Australia, the news is all bad for lovers of the crinkly folding stuff.
The Advertiser‘s weekday and Saturday print editions, and the Sunday Mail, all suffered huge declines despite turning the town into a veritable ticker-tape parade of free copies.
Monday to Friday, the Tiser’s readership went into freefall, dropping from 413,000 in September 2013 to 359,000 for the same month this year. The Saturday edition dropped more than 70,000 print readers – falling from 511,000 to 438,000. The Sunday Mail also dropped below 500,000, plummeting to 487,000 from the previous year’s 555,000.
However, digital readership increased for Murdoch’s SA operation, meaning its total readership rose by 3.7 per cent.
Print revenues are still crucial for News Corp – something will have to give sooner or later.
Movers and shakers
One of Adelaide’s reporting legends is retiring.
Channel Seven courts reporter Graham Hunter has covered the legal beat for more than 30 years (and he says the Snowtown murders are easily the most horrific examples of all the human misery he has witnessed in that time).
Hunter began his reporting career at The Advertiser in 1972. Fourteen years later he began at what was then SAS 10, a year before it became SAS 7.
“My time at the Seven Network has been a blast,” Graham says. “It’s astonishing to realise it’s been almost 28 years. I’ve been surrounded by a great team of hardworking, dedicated professionals who are also a really great bunch of people. I’ll miss them all. But it’s time to start the next chapter.”
He’s leaving the station at the end of the year.
Quite appropriately, on Melbourne Cup day Hunter drew “Au Revoir” in both the $2 and $5 office sweeps.
Also at Seven, reporter Rodney Lohse has returned to Adelaide to work on Today Tonight, 11 years after he last reported for the local current affairs show.
Uber marketing
Uber, the cashed-up interlopers threatening the taxi industry, are an interesting case study in marketing.
The company charged into the Adelaide market – as they do in all markets – and moved as quickly as possible to sign up drivers and create a buzz, mostly through social media, word-of-mouth, and “negative” publicity which had the opposite effect.
Last night it held an official launch party at Jolley’s Boathouse, with the guest list including politicians, business types and local “partner” drivers.
Uber uses a clever app to link passengers with drivers. At the moment, it’s only offering the Uber Black service, which is essentially just a more efficient booking service for registered hire car drivers. However, it is ploughing on with plans to introduce Uber X – which links average people with cars with those who need a ride.
The Government has reluctantly moved to bring Uber Black into compliance with the laws, but it says it won’t countenance Uber X.
Uber won’t easily be stopped – as evidenced by its latest marketing coup.
Adelaide Uber services are now integrated with Google maps, meaning Uber cars are offered as an option when you’re planning a trip, along with other transport services.
The move isn’t surprising – Google is one of Uber’s backers.
Naughty corner
Every week, we’ll put a media organisation (even ourselves, if we deserve it), advertising firm, PR agency or even a government spin doctor in the Naughty Corner for transgressions against communication or just good sense.
This week’s inaugural winner is radio FIVEaa, particularly its brekky team, for its contribution to “debate” on cycling in Adelaide (a pity we didn’t start last week, otherwise The Advertiser and the Central Market would have been joint winners for the worst ghost video ever).
The FIVEaa team, led by David Penberthy, think it’s a good idea to get stuck into cyclists – among the most vulnerable of road users. This morning Penbo described various cyclists as nutjobs and militants who are pandered to on the roads (and he recounted his encounter with a “crusty, dreadlocked weirdo” on a bike in the trendy inner-Sydney suburb of Newtown).
The coup de grace was the trashing of a Green proposal to have drivers keep a mandated one-metre clearance from cyclists on the road.
If a motorist believes it’s a good plan to pass a bike at speed within one metre, they really shouldn’t be driving.
FIVEaa’s sports presenter Stephen Rowe was an unlucky runner-up.
After reading the news about AFL players Taylor Hunt and Matthew Dick changing clubs, Rowey proclaimed: “A Dick and a Hunt!”
