Duncan Campbell: ‘it’s an election book’

If you haven't yet seen the results and analysis from survey 5, see it all here.

You can also see the press releases here and the ups and downs here.

During the day I caught up with Duncan Campbell, to get his overview of how ARN went in survey 5.

Duncan: It’s an election book. We’ve seen AM listening increase considerably and that has impacted the shares of the FM stations, particularly those carrying adult demo’s. The Nova network wasn’t as impacted as much as the Today network or the Classic Hits network or the Mix network for example.

Within that context there’s still some positive stories for us. Getting back to #1 in Brisbane was a great achievement from those guys and Mix 102.3 is #1 in Adelaide again.

The Classic Hits stations are fairly steady. Gold in Melbourne is down 0.1 but that’s a good achievement in this survey given what else has been going on. WSFM still #2 FM and Jonesy & Amanda now only 0.5 away from Kyle & Jackie O, based on the fact they both went down a little bit.

It’s not a great result to be honest and I’m not going to sit here and say we’re all chuffed about it, but the challenges still remain Mix 101.1 and Mix 106.5. Some of the numbers don’t make a lot of sense when you listen to the radio stations so I think we remain very much on strategy with both those stations. There's still a lot of work to do by the way and that work continues. We certainly won’t be knee-jerking based on this result but I won’t shy away from the fact that the Mix 106.5 result is disappointing.

Mark: Is the 25-39 demo in both Sydney and Melbourne the most concerning ?

Duncan: I think that families may have gone across to some talk stations to have a listen to what’s going on. 2GB in Sydney has gone up 4.2% with 25-39’s so that’s come off the FM’s. The only network not impacted has been Nova but they carry strong numbers under 40. Those that carry big numbers 30+ have been impacted. That won’t hold on 2GB, that’s an election book. The only problem for us is it will take another book to wash it out because we’re in the middle of survey 6 and the election is still going. I thought the audiences would be tiring of the election by now but with the emphasis on policy relating to families, that’s causing some interest, hence the impact on FM shares.

Mark: Interesting to see that WSFM is #1 on weekends, that obviously bolsters your overall 10+. Why are listeners turning on WSFM then ?

Duncan: If you look at ARN overall, we’re actually number 1 on weekends as a network 10+. ARN have a 15.1%, dmg have 14.0%, SCA have 13.6%. When you isolate the disturbance caused by the election during the week, you look at weekends and what you have is a reinforcement of the music strategy which we know is very strong and bang on target. If that wasn’t the case we wouldn’t be seeing weekend shares like that.

Mark: You’d be happy to see Cruise 1323 in Adelaide in front of both SAFM and Triple M ?

Duncan: I think that’s an anomaly of this election book once again. I think we’re getting some audiences across to AM and when they tire of talk they’re flicking across to the AM music stations. Extraordinary to have Cruise above SAFM and Triple M.

Mark: As long as John Dean (Cruise breakfast host) doesn’t come looking for an $11m deal over 4 years?

Duncan: I think John would know my response (laughs).