What's New
BY Sarah Patterson April 9, 2024
What's New March 31, 2022
Unique and inclusive: CADA launches
Reporter
LISTEN NOW TO THE LAUNCH LIVE
“CADA is not just a radio station. It brings Aussies closer to culture, artists, and the Hip Hop and R&B music they love.”
ARN, CADA General Manager Emily Copeland speaks to Radio Today ahead of the official launch of ARN’s new national youth media platform.
At 4pm today, The Edge 96.1 will officially relaunch as CADA, Australia’s home of Hip Hop and R&B.
Unique, inclusive and exclusive content will all be part of the experience.
But why the change?
Emily says “We identified a rare opportunity to reimagine The Edge as a multi-platform youth brand, anchored in Hip Hop and R&B and driven by content.”
“While The Edge has always been a big supporter of these genres of music, the launch of CADA marks a milestone moment for artists and fans – a home for Hip Hop and R&B in Australia, and a local, mainstream audio platform dedicated to it.”
And CADA stood out as a fitting name.
“What we love about the name CADA is that it brings to mind cadence – the tempo of music and speech – which is perfect for a brand which champions Hip Hop and R&B artists both locally and around the globe.”
“CADA is providing a new avenue for Hip Hop and R&B artists to showcase their music on a station with national reach, growing opportunities for both local and global artists to reach fans around the country.”
Audio will be the centrepiece of a multi-platform offering.
Emily says the creation of an integrated content environment will drive engagement and cut-through with the audience.
“We have a diverse line-up of hosts and content makers. They are an incredible cast of talent who each bring something unique to CADA.”
“While there are many new faces on the line up, you’ll also see a familiar face or two – such as K-Sera (pictured), who has been championing Hip Hop and R&B on the radio with ARN for many years, and has been instrumental in providing support to artists throughout their careers.
“K-Sera’s relationships in the global Hip Hop music community are affording CADA incredible opportunities when it comes to artist access and content creation.”
K-Sera tells Radio Today “My show will be sounding off the 12 hottest hip hop tracks of the day on CADA and introducing our audience to their new favourite Australian or New Zealand artists 11.30-1pm Weekdays. We also give the audience the opportunity to vote on The New Track of the day via their iHeart Radio app – thumbs up or thumbs down.”
“And on The K-Sera Show on Monday nights 6pm-8pm I’ll get up close and personal with the biggest international Hip Hop Superstars, deliver the UK and NZ Top 3 tracks and open the vault and resurrect some of my favourite Hip Hop interview moments from the past 2 decades.”
Think 50 Cent, Mobb Deep, Redman, Post Malone, Bryson Tiller, DJ Khaled and Chuck D, to name just a few.
Emily says that in addition to the audio content that will be coming out of CADA across FM, DAB and iHeartRadio, CADA also has an in-house production team who can turn around video content at the speed of culture, to ensure it always stays relevant.
“We believe a great content idea shouldn’t be limited to any one platform, so in producing all of our content and ideas we are considering multiple formats, and how it might come to life across each.”
CADA’s talent line up includes ARIA nominated artists, content creators and DJs, fashion designers, chefs and comedians.
And while many of CADA’s talent have their own extensive social media audiences, Emily says none of them can be accused of only being influencers.
“They all have their finger on the pulse of music and culture, and are able to speak with credibility to a youth audience.”
Cada has various meanings in different languages, some of which might apply to the brand the stations is trying to build. In Spanish it means ‘every,’ in Sanskrit it can mean ‘passionate,’ and in the Indian dialect Marathi it can mean ‘loose-tongued’ or someone who blabs.
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What's New
BY Sarah Patterson April 8, 2024
This is going to take share from Nova. That’s the issue when a station like Nova is in stand still mode. They’re in no man’s land
Nova stands for nothing these days. Its clear that ARN wants to take ratings of Nova as Nova and KIIS are the revenue leaders. 2Day and Triple M are in no mans land. Triple J audience dont move to commercial stations in general. ” Nova boy ” and ” Red Rooms ” wont help.
KIIS have Kyle and that’s all they have but if you win breakfast, you win. I would hire a smart, savvy, contemporary Marketing person for Nova to begin with. ARN will completely own
15-54’s.
@Jase – Nova is no longer as youth station. It’s no longer edgy or cool – their breakfast show has a Mummy-Podcaster as a regular guest… I don’t think Nova’s audience is Cada’s audience (maybe it was 12 years ago).
There’s very little share to be taken from Nova. Although I agree on your stand-still comment. The most pedestrian and boring ‘CHR’ brand currently on-air.
And another post about CADA…probably on Tuesday and Friday we will see another ones….
The Edge is not included in Sydney ratings so it will be hard to see impact on Sydney market. Only DAB rating will be some kind of indicator…
Sorry to bore you @Hkn, but we think a new format which claims to be different in style and delivery is worth watching, so we will keep covering it to see how it develops. Avert your eyes AND EARS when you see the word C**A in future 🙂
Triple J , with ADS?
Why didn’t SCA do a National Youth Under 30 Brand. They have more spectrum than anybody, and could have included regional markets. All these ‘ era ‘ Digital channels, who listens to ‘ era’s ‘ listeners listen to songs, genre not era.
CADA won’t show up in GFK ratings but you can still see decline in stations like triple J and Nova in the surveys. Congratulations ARN.
I get what they are doing. I understand what they are trying to achieve.
It has all the right buzz words: Unique, inclusive, exclusive, multi-platform, culture, youth.
I’m certain it looked great when they presented it to the board.
But, I just don’t see it.
The audience they are chasing just don’t listen to radio… certainly not FM or DAB, and not sure the proposition is strong enough to encourage people to download iHeartRadio.
Understood that ARN are wanting to sell ads to a younger demographic that their current stations service, and hats off to them for trying.
But yeah. It is what it is.
I thought the launch piece was very under cooked. For what they were trying to achieve there was no “wow” in it, it was just very flat.
Not going to knock it (too much) in it’s first few hours, but I found the whole thing pretty underwhelming, and I’m smack bang in demo.
I’ll continue to get my Hip Hop fix add free on Apple, but best of luck to the team.
Are they localising the DAB feed in all other markets outside of Sydney? Really hope they got that sorted and aren’t still sending Sydney traffic and commercials around the whole country.
All these comments on CADA stealing share from Nova.. I can tell you now, Nova aren’t worried. The Nova of the ‘sounds different’ era grew up with its audience at least 10+ years ago when it stopped focusing on being a triple j with ads to compete squarely with the AC/CHRs of SCA and ARN.
Whilst CADA may be a modern incarnation of the Nova of old, it won’t be stealing share from any of the bigger commercial players. Remember, CADA is primarily a DAB+ and streaming station with one (regional) FM frequency pointing towards Western Sydney. It will shake about as many cages in the Sydney radio world as community station FBi or narrowcaster Raw FM does.
But good luck to CADA; it’s definitely edgier than KIIS and sounds different enough from most on radio. It’ll be good for the industry if it’s a success.
Been sampling the station since it launched at 4pm Thursday, both online and through DAB+ in Melbourne.
Really has not been anything like this since the days of Wild FM and the various other similar stations or that era.
In terms of technology and culture these are very different times to those yet there’s a similar vibe about how Cada expresses something different from the status quo while not steering too far from the mainstream.
It’s also novel one of these big networks would finally use some DAB+ spectrum to launch a full-service radio station rather than the usual serving of jock-free music jukebox with ads.
Interesting to note that after all that debate over what 2Day ought to do (years and years of debate) it took a stand-alone like The Edge 96.1 to step up and offer this.
And wow what it just turned into. Loving Cada. Well done ARN.
I’m WAY too old for CADA’s demographic – I’m more of the “One FM” era. To re-launch something like this to appeal to the younger demographic that is easily distracted by other outlets, is amazing. Credit goes to ARN for going this direction, and I really hope this goes extremely well.
For me, I was the target demo for when NOVA Sydney launched. It was the coolest thing to hear in my ears as a late teen / early 20-something. Now, CADA will be the coolest thing for another late teen / early 20-something.
Had a listen this morning via the iHeartRadio app, and thought I must have accidently selected the latest AFTRS station.
Very messy, the stream jumped all over the place and they couldn’t seem to get the traffic to air despite their best efforts.
If I were ARN, I’d be disappointed with this launch and first impression it’s given with an audience who don’t live in a world where technical issues happen that often.
To all the comments re Nova being worried about this.
Trust me, they ain’t.
In fact, The Edge was more of a threat than Cada.
They literally think their gonna “change the world”. Delusional
@No No Nova
It’s this sort of strange complacency and ego that Nova should be worried about most. It reminds me of the days of Nova 10 years ago before it was revitalized and they changed programming.
What Nova should be most worried about is that they believe everything is going ok. Like a car teetering on the edge of a cliff. They stand for nothing, have had zero innovation or big ideas, the shows are now so stale they will never get above middle of the road in ratings and there is no one left in programming that will challenge the thinking that is traditional and conservative.
It’s such a shame that they are learning it whither on the vines.
What Cada will do is divert revenue away from Nova to a network that is injecting some ideas and innovation into the industry. Nova stopped doing that a long time ago.
It’s really sad
No no nova
You are right Nova isn’t in touch with this demographic and obviously isn’t interested. They won’t loose any listeners but won’t gain any either from this demographic that does not listen to radio until now on CADA and most CADA listeners will stream . Nova will become the 4IP 3XY and 2SM over time on FM and future radio listeners will be on other platforms. I agree Nova should not worry about losing their listeners at all they aim at older demographics who only use radio, they don’t have this audience any way
If I was Nova I would be more concerned about the sleeper 2DAYFM breakfast. Hughesy has a massive fan base, always on TV and Erin has a high profile in Sydney.
Sorry Ed, but “ Hughesy and Erin “ would be better as a Duo and will take audience from Fitzy and Wippa.
Great music Cada but please leave politics out of it and mocking of a certain religion is very disrespectful and I will not be listening to your station anymore ..