ACE Radio’s Jon Vertigan: “We’re excited about the growth we’re seeing”
It’s a case of onward and upward at the ACE Radio Network, which is particularly excited about the growth it’s seeing across its metro stations in Brisbane and Melbourne
As ACE Radio’s Metro Content Director Jon Vertigan tells Radio Today, GfK Survey 5 brought both mixed and encouraging results for the network.
“In Brisbane, 4BH just keeps on growing. Three surveys in a row now with a cume of 255,000 and still absolutely dominating the 50+ audience.”
In Melbourne, things held reasonably steady.
“[There was] a great little lift for 3MP, which we were really happy with,” says Vertigan.
“That’s it’s best result this year. Magic stayed solid too. Together, these two performing with the 55 to 64 market, a stronger share we’ve seen under ACE ownership.”
Vertigan says it was a bit of a rough book for Sydney’s 2UE this time around with declines in both cume and TSL (Time Spent Listening).
“But we feel as though we’re identifying where the opportunities are and we’ve got some tactics in place to hopefully drive some engagement back up and we’re hoping to see some better numbers in Survey 6.”
“We’re excited about the growth we’re seeing, especially in Brisbane and Melbourne and confident about the plans we have in Sydney.”
ACE Radio Broadcasters is home to 21 stations over twelve key population centres across Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane as well a regional Victoria and Southern New South Wales.
Would it be fair to assume that one of the tactics in place to drive up engagement for 2UE during Survey #6 might be the rollout of their version of ACE Radio’s new visual branding design (as already launched by Magic 1278 and I believe also the Wangaratta stations)?
From a broader marketing/advertising perspective, I’d suggest that an “Are you missing your favourite Classic Hits?” type angle would probably work well as a counter to 101.7 and 95.3 who are shifting more towards AC formats.
Although personally, I think ACE have really got to look at bringing in more locally based on-air talent for 2UE. At the very least, they need to have weekday breakfast actually presented in Sydney!
I think 2ue breakfast should be a duo.
Bring back the request line.
More 80’s music.
A redo of the “ drain man ad” which constantly sounds like is pronounced the “ dream man”.
Overall justs needs to sound lively.
Take a leaf out of Gavin Millers book.
@I love radio: Don’t know if they’d be in ACE’s price range, but I’d probably say the most obvious duo that comes to mind as being ideal for a Classic Hits 2UE breakfast show is the one currently on 101.7 being pushed to network drive in 2026!
2CH had a duo on brekky some 6-7 years ago with Trevor Sinclair and Indira Naidoo, however it didn’t do much for the ailing station’s ratings then. Aside from that, there’s a fairly long history of AM music stations (at least here in Sydney) only having a single presenter doing a music-centric breakfast shift.
2UE has become boring. Take the Sixties Sunday morning show. Of all the songs on the 2UE Top Forty in the sixties, the same old 100 songs roll around every Sunday morning.
Maybe a Clasuc Hits Top Forty each week and play the songs that were actually on the Top 40.