ARN’s Duncan Campbell on Survey 2: “There’s a bit of churn going on in the Melbourne market”

Less than two weeks out from Kyle & Jackie O’s much-hyped launch into Melbourne, Duncan Campbell isn’t feeling any butterflies.

But, in an interview with our sister publication RadioInfo post metro Survey 2, ARN’s Chief Content Officer says he’s certainly not feeling cocky about it, either.

Universal content, he believes, will win the day.

“I don’t have butterflies, no,” Campbell says. “The more commentary I read and the more opinions I hear from (the) industry and related industries, I just think that I’m right in my assessment of the Sydney-Melbourne rivalry not being as big a deal as it once was, particularly with the demo we’re targeting.”

Whilst the perception of Kyle among Melbourne listeners is an issue ARN is keen to tackle, Campbell believes K & J’s content will speak for itself.

Be it good, bad or ugly, the Sydney duo is certainly generating plenty of talk.

Campbell welcomes the buzz around K & J.

“That’s what we want. We want people who maybe are fence sitters to have a listen and maybe they can make up their own mind.”

Campbell says the latest book suggests there’s a bit of ‘churn’ going on in the Melbourne market.

Today’s results see Jase & Lauren settling in well at Nova 100, where Breakfast jumped from 6.7 to 8.3%.

Of the KIIS 101.1 breakfast audience following Jase & Lauren over to Nova, Campbell says “I think, to be fair, to give context, Jase & Lauren were only on for two weeks of that survey, so … I think it’s interesting that Gold breakfast went down, Fox went up a little bit, Triple M went down, Nova went up.”

“I think there’s a bit of churn going on, to be honest. Because you would have the Jase & Lauren fans moving across.”

Campbell says that while KIIS has always had a very high cume, they’ve never been able to generate any share out of it.

“They key is that cume sticking, but that’s yet to be proven. I daren’t use the word ‘trend,’ it’s only two surveys, and Kyle and Jack’ll be on at the end of this month.”

Campbell rejects any suggestion that the KIIS strategy was to deplete its breakfast audience prior to Kyle & Jackie’s O arrival on the scene, to ensure an uptick in Melbourne in Survey 3.

“I can categorically tell you that that was never discussed. I mean, we want to give them as much cume as possible, not the least amount of cume.”

Campbell says the reason for any delay was technical.

“We weren’t ready to go. We wanted to make sure it was right.”

Moving to the new Sydney studios, he says, only added to the complexity of the situation.

Right now, the focus is on April 29, when K & J will explode onto the Melbourne breakfast airwaves.

“We’ll get a fairly early indicator of how well they’re going to go,” says Campbell.

“There’s so much buzz about them at the moment, so much chatter.”

“There’ll be some strong marketing as well.”