The annual Mid-dawn ratings for various capital cities have been released, of particular interest to me is the Sydney Ratings, as they influence Sydney’s mid-dawn programming, whcih in turn affects the programming they relay into Canberra.
2UE’s Stuart Bocking is off to a great start, pulling the station back within 5 points of rival 2GB, 2GB are on 16.9%, 2UE 12.5%, Triple M 9.5%, Mix 106.5 8.8% and NewsRadio 8.1% rounds out the top five. According to RadioInfo, this is the highest score NewsRadio has acheived in mid-dawn, and it’s all to do with “specially programmed” BBC radio, which is broadcast by NewsRadio overnight.
Radioinfo has plenty of info on some of the other capital cities:
In Melbourne Trevor Chappell’s national overnight program on ABC774 is top with 21.7%, followed by 3AW with 20.3%. Nova 100 is third with 10.3%, followed by Gold on 7.7%. NewsRadio does not score as strongly in Melbourne with only 2.8%, while SEN, which broadcasts overnight international sport, scores 4.7%.
In Adelaide talk station 5AA was streets ahead of its rivals on 28.0%. ABC talk station ABC891 was second with 15.0%, followed by SAFM on 11.3 and Mix 102.3 on 9.6%.
Radioinfo’s headline for their article about Mid-Dawn ratings is “Talk top at nights”…and why wouldn’t it be? If you’re listening to the radio in the wee hours, you’re probably not after presenter-free music and ads…you probably want some company, and these ratings show that.
Samuel
September 25th, 2006 at 12:25pm
It looks like the gradual revision of 2CA programming has started this morning, with their short, not quite on the hour (or the half hour), pre-recorded news bulletins scrapped in favour of sharing live news with 2CC under the guise of “Capital Radio News”. I personally think the old “Capital Radio Network News had more gradeur…but it did take half a second longer to say, and that’s half a second not dedicated to news.
As of 5:30 this morning 2CA and 2CC have returned to sharing the bulletins, something they stopped doing when 2CA relaunched with their failed “new sound” in late January.
Also, 2CC have a new outcue for their news bulletins, no longer do we hear that “There’ll be more news at (time of next bulletin) on 2CC, where you’ll hear it first in the nations capital”, instead we now hear that 2CC has “live local news on the hour, the half-hour, and when it breaks”, which is remarkably similar to the outcue used by KFI AM 640 in Los Angeles, their outcue is “KFI is the station with live local news on the hour, on the half, and when it breaks”.
Mind you, the new outcue must be one of the most short-lived outcues in the history of radio…by 7am they were back to the old “There’ll be more news at…” outcue, which is probably just as well, as the new one was a downright lie.
On weekdays 2CC have live and local news from 5:30am to 6pm, with live (but not local) news from 7pm to 11pm, and pre-recorded news (thanks 2UE!) from midnight to 5am. Weekends are the same, except the live but not local news starts at 1pm, and the pre-recorded news runs through until 5:30am.
2CC also have an actual intro for Dennis Leigh’s traffic reports…it’s just a sound effect of a car horn beeping twice and 2CC’s voiceover man saying something to the effect of “2CC Traffic for (insert sponsor here)”, but it is a change from the newsreader informing us that it is now time for 2CC traffic…he still gets a live intro from presenters though. That being said, Dennis changed his outro from “more 2CC traffic shortly” to “more Canberra traffic shortly”. Oh it’s a strange day in news and traffic at that station today.
As for 2CA…looks like the old format might be making a bit of a comeback, something which was rumoured a couple days after their recent ratings disaster. A source inside Capital Radio said to me “It looks like we will be heading to a “Classic Hits” type of format over the next few weeks”, and it looks like that source was right…in fact it looks like the old format is making a comeback, the news is certainly an indicator of that.
The source also told me “the music has been pretty “confused” since we started, with songs like “Morning Has Broken” followed by Nickelback etc. Realistically, I think the younger audience would switch off when the old stuff came on, and the older audience would switch off when the new stuff came on.” Which left them with a mere 2.9% of Canberra, most of which who switched off when music they didn’t like started playing.
Samuel
September 25th, 2006 at 09:23am
Only one weekend to go, and it’s the weekend that gives teams gloating rights for the next 52 weeks!
The weekend that just passed was a mixed bag for me, as people who followed Loki’s updates in the recent Footy Tipping post would know all about. My AFL tips were spot on, but the NRL tips were only slightly above negative territory…a very round figure.
AFL Finals Week 3: 2/2 (100%)
NRL Finals Week 3: 0/2 (0%)
Week Total: 2/4 (50%)
Totals:
AFL: 96/184 (52.17%)
NRL: 99/188 (52.66%)
Total: 195/372 (52.42%)
This now puts my AFL percentage within striking distance of my NRL percentage, but only if I correctly tip the winner of the AFL Grand Final, and fail to tip the winner of the NRL Grand Final. The possibilities are as follows:
AFL (0) and NRL (0):
AFL: 51.89%
NRL: 52.38%
AFL (1) and NRL (0):
AFL: 52.43%
NRL: 52.38%
AFL (0) and NRL (1):
AFL: 51.89%
NRL: 52.91%
AFL (1) and NRL (1):
AFL: 52.43%
NRL: 52.91%
For the record, my ACTAFL tips for the year were fantastic (much to the delight of the Swans Reserves):
ACTAFL Season Total 0/1 (0%)
Samuel
September 25th, 2006 at 06:55am