The halo is back with a vengeance and thanks to Kyle and Jackie O, this time it’s not TV but radio.
The leap by 2DayFM’s star breakfast team across to Kiis 1065 has not only catapulted the ARN-owned station’s breakfast slot to the top equal position on the FM band in a single survey but has also put a rocket behind every one of Kiis FM’s day parts, from morning to afternoons to drive and evenings.
TV networks talk often about their early prime-time shows and tentpole programs having a network-wide effect on audience numbers and how important it is to have a few big consistent hitters. The same applies for radio it seems, at least when it comes to the controversial duo at Kiis. The decline on 2DayFM across every day part is broadly in line with the gains made by Kiis.
There are calls, however, for sobriety from the first survey results for Kiis under the crack breakfast team and a new radio industry ratings survey from GfK.
“You really need to wait for the second survey,” said Ian Muir, a industry veteran on media audience measurement systems – Muir was the early architect for the current OzTam TV ratings panel. “Some of this is real, some of it is imagined. But to a get real sense on these [radio] figures you need to wait for the second survey. How much was it curiosity or a real shift in people’s allegiances? I would think Kiis would be trying to promote very heavily now to protect itself.”
As for the halo effect on the rest of the Kiis programming schedule, Muir says “it’s a good way to describe it”.
Nick Keenan, managing director of media agency Maxus Melbourne, concurs. “Of course there is a halo effect in radio. There has to be. Ultimately it’s the talent that has made radio such a fantastic medium for advertisers. Intuitively people identify with talent. For all the controversy Kyle creates, what people don’t want is vanilla. They want someone they can identify with.”
There is hope though for those radio networks without the mega stars. Other radio networks like Fairfax Radio have also delivered solid gains in this survey without the big names.
But for now, it’s hail to the halo.
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