Jackson ‘delighted with everything across the board’

If you haven't yet seen the results from yesterday's survey 2, see them here.

You can also see the press releases here, ups and downs here and my chat with Charlie Fox, CD of the newly crowned #1FM station in Sydney, WSFM here. Phew……

During the day I also caught up with Group Program Director of dmg Radio, Paul Jackson, to run through how survey 2 went for the network.

Paul: This one’s good fun, we’re enjoying it today.

Mark: What’s the highlight for you ?

Paul: There’s plenty of highlights across the board with both the Nova network and smooth going very well. So delighted with pretty much everything across the board really. To be the number 1 network under 40 obviously is the highlight and I think for Nova in Sydney, for the team here, to be #1 with the highest cume in the marketplace is a sensational result.

Many markets across the world focus on cume as being the key measurement so that’s a great achievement and we have some record cumes across the country.

In the context of how competitive the marketplace is today and how tough things can be, to have the highest cume for us is brilliant. We’ve done very well with cume across the country in recent times but I think we’re sitting on record cumes in Adelaide, Brisbane and Perth and over 900,000 in Melbourne. I guess that’s what’s going to happen in the first instance, you have to get the people in and keep giving them a compelling product to eventually turn that into bigger share numbers. I’m delighted with that, it bodes very well.

Mark: In Sydney, Fitzy & Wippa up 0.3

Paul: Yes, I think Fitzy & Wippa are sounding superb since we started in breakfast but certainly the last 6 months and this year they hit the ground running. They’ve been consistently outstanding to my ears and the team are doing an exceptional job with it. It takes time when you’re up against juggernaut breakfast shows but I think we’ve made some very good breakthroughs. It’s in a very good place both with the cume increases and the share increases. We’ll continue to do what we do there.

Mark: With Adelaide having 2 new breakfast shows on two competing stations (Nova 919 / SAFM) obviously a real battleground. You lost some ground this survey but how are you feeling about that market ?

Paul: Yeah really good. I went down there recently and that’s a terrific team of people there and they work ever so hard. I think the breakfast show numbers are absolutely fine, the cume is terrific and then the overall number, the sum of the parts and you put it together, is very good.

Yes it’s a highly competitive marketplace and I have big respect for our competition in Adelaide and pretty much everywhere. We have no devine rights to just turn up and win and that team in Adelaide work very hard and it’s very early days for a new show still finding its shape, I think they’ve done really well.

Mark: Over in Perth, Nova 937 #2 and gaining on Mix 94.5

Paul: Outstanding, Nova Perth. To hit number 1 cume in the entire marketplace, that is outstanding. I can’t praise Perth highly enough, for Dan Underhill (PD) and the whole team, I think they’re one of the most consistent stations in the country. Again, it’s a huge battle, there’s a lot of other very good products over there but our team there has done terrifically.

What it really gives us is the #1 network overall under 40, so the combined share looking at Nova as sum of the parts when you join it all up and you take our national position – we’re a 16.5 share, SCA is a 15.8 – that is what we’re looking at, everybody pulling their weight and the collective Nova network position is in a fantastic place.

Mark: With smooth – one up , one down. How is the progress of that going ?

Paul: Absolutely brilliant as well. Sydney’s got a 5 share, terrific shares across the piece there and Melbourne is obviously outstanding. I can’t wait for the day when both of them actually go forward at the same time. One up, one down, we’ll take that. If you said to me at any point since we started this 10 months ago that we’d have these sorts of numbers inside a year I’d absolutely take that.

The cumes are brilliant, one’s just over 500,000, one’s just under and the shares in Melbourne are outstanding. In Sydney we’ve seen those sorts of shares and we will do again. That’s fine. That’s terrific actually.