The Australian is reporting on a rather peculiar statement [1] from Macquarie Radio (Sydney’s 2GB and 2CH) chief executive Angela Clark.
Ms. Clark claims that Deborah Cameron’s success this year on ABC 702 Sydney’s morning show is “a survey glitch”. She is referring to the latest survey [2] in particular where Ms. Cameron had the attention of 10.1% of the Sydney audience, putting her in second place behind 2GB’s Ray Hadley who was in the ear of 13.7% of Sydney listeners.
Ms. Cameron is relatively new to the airwaves, having taken over the morning show at the beginning of this year as a replacement for Virginia Trioli, leaving her newspaper journalism role to do so. It has been widely noted that Ms. Cameron doesn’t come across as a “polished” radio presenter, and perhaps that is part of her charm and part of the reason for her success. In many ways I think talk radio presenters sound more credible when they sound like they are ad-libbing rather than reading a piece of paper.
Anyway, back to my point. Angela Clark claims that the latest survey is a glitch, but I would like to know what she makes of the trend.
Virginia Trioli scored 7.2% in the final survey [3] of last year. This year Deborah Cameron’s ratings have been:
Survey 1 [4]: 7.9%
Survey 2 [5]: 8.0%
Survey 3 [6]: 7.7%
Survey 4 [7]: 9.4%
Survey 5 [2]: 10.1%
The clear trend here is upwards, and if there was a “glitch” in the data used in survey four, then I would have expected survey five to deliver a lower percentage, not a higher one. To explain, the metro markets such as Sydney generally use two reporting periods per survey. Survey one only has one reporting period, but that is shared with survey two which uses reporting periods one and two, survey three uses reporting periods two and three, survey four uses reporting period three and four, and so on. If reporting period four was abnormally high, then it should have been balanced out by reporting period five, but it wasn’t, so the trend is an upward one.
This all makes me wonder what Ms. Clark expects me to make of 2CH’s unexpected success this year, especially considering that Macquarie have publicly expressed their pleasure with 2CH’s results:
Survey 1: 5.6% (9th)
Survey 2: 5.4% (9th)
Survey 3: 6.7% (7th)
Survey 4: 7.3% (6th)
Survey 5: 7.1% (6th)
The trend here is an upward one, and for a station which works with a minimal budget and virtually no promotion, it’s an impressive jump, especially considering that they are now ahead of six of the eight other music stations.
That said though, if 2CH’s trend isn’t as strong as Deborah Cameron’s trend, and Ms. Cameron’s trend can be written off as a glitch by Ms. Clark, surely Macquarie should be wary about praising 2CH’s wonderful upward glitch. Or does the goose live under separate conditions to the gander?
Samuel