Christian O’Connell: Radio ratings are ridiculous

After the ratings results last week, Christian O’Connell has come up with a way to promote his national show, and at the same time, had a spray at ratings and ratings coverage in Australia.

To promote his show he is enlisting the help of loyal listeners to provide new slogans to convince Sydney  to listen.

He told listeners yesterdsay:

“The show needs your help.

“Now you’re probably aware how radio works. I’m sure that you’ve read about all the goings on the moment with Kyle and Jackie O’s domination of the news headlines all of last week and for the last couple of weeks.

“Obviously we are a breakfast show as well, and as of January this year, this show is in all five cities. We are Australia’s first ever national commercial breakfast show.

“Last week was a big moment because it was the first radio ratings of the year, and in this country radio ratings are hysterical, ridiculous. I still can’t believe it’s actually reported as news in the UK. It’s just used for radio nerds. And then I moved here and it was actually on the TV news I saw.

“I remember the first couple of months of the show here in 2018. I was just watching the TV news and I suddenly saw my face and there was a graph that was not going up to the right. I don’t know whether I had upside down the TV company, but was going down down down to the right and there’s a picture of me with the headline ‘expensive foreign import, as if I was some sort of car…

“So anyway, that was nothing. I thought it was a lot of the time… I saw the hysterical reaction. The team all saw this, our family saw it… So what happened. We’re sitting strong in Melbourne. In Sydney, obviously, the ratings that came out last week were for the first six weeks of our show and all the breakfast shows in Sydney…

“Sydney right now is wide open because of what’s happened with Kyle and Jackie O. So it is crazy. It’s like a it’s like a mad rush right now in Sydney for a lot of available listeners. So it really was a big deal in radio and the news last week about the first ever ratings for 2026.

“We came in as a brand new show. I’ve only been on air for six weeks, thirty odd shows. We came in at number four. You would have thought that I’d come in at number four hundred and forty four. Here’s one of the headlines: ‘Radio star suffers brutal ratings collapse,’  then they paired it with a photo I’ve never seen before of me looking demented. On the main news website in Indonesia was a picture of me with the headline: ‘Radio veteran’s ratings bomb.’ What’s it got to do with Indonesia? 

“It’s early days… I think this is a strong start.

“The Boss had a big chat with me over the weekend, and I want every single team member to listen in right now because I think you’re gonna double down on your efforts right now when you hear about the bonus and incentive that’s being offered to every single team member.

“Team. I’ve been told that if we can get from fourth to third the Sydney Breakfast Show ratings, everyone who works on this show gets a Meat Tray.” 

Announcing the launch of ‘Operation Meet Tray,’ Christian invited listeners to help.

“There are people in our marketing department here at the radio station coming up with all kinds of word play  magic to try and sell the show to new and possible listeners in Sydney.

“I think the best people that we should ask to help is you, guys [the listeners]. If you listen to the show and you keep coming back to us, why and how would you sell this show in one line to someone who might be listening to us right now in Sydney.”

Christian O’Connell has set his target as getting to third place in the breakfast timeslot in Sydney by the end of the ratings year.

The comparison between Australian and British ratings is an interesting one.

Australian ratings since the 1940s (previously Anderson, McNair, then Nielsen, now GfK) have always taken a robust approach because Australian radio has had competition between public and commercial broadcasters since the 1930s. Commercial radio was first on air in Australia, followed by the ABC in the 1930s then community radio from the 1970s. In the rough and tumble world of Australian radio, share became the measure of first-past-the-post victory and a way to show how one station had beaten another for the purposes of advertising.

In the more sedate world of Old Blighty, the BBC had a monopoly on broadcasting until the 1960s, so ratings there developed a focus on listening numbers (weekly reach, also known as cume), not share of audience. That was until some brash Aussie radio broadcasters teamed with rebel pirate radio operators in 1964 to launch pirate station Radio Caroline outside the 12 mile limit and broadcast pop music into the old country.  Then the landscape got a bit more competitive, but never as much as Australia, as Christian said ‘ratings there is just for radio nerds.’