Southern Cross Austereo (SCA) has downplayed the results for its Sydney 2Day hit101.1 station, with SCA head of content Craig Bruce saying the ratings “reinforce that we're on a long road”.
The station – part of the newly rebranded Today's Hit Network – saw a flat result for newly installed breakfast team Dan & Maz, who stayed on 3.0% audience share. It saw a moderate boost in its key demographic of 18-24 but the largest swing in the age bracket went to ABC youth station Triple J, which saw an 8.0 percentage point boost to 17.9% audience share.
Despite the ratings, Bruce told AdNews it is important to remember that radio is a long game, and that the ratings swing that Kiis saw in Sydney last year, after bringing Kyle and Jackie O in as its breakfast team, was not the norm.
“It's important that finally we can put what happened to Kiis in Sydney last year in its rightful place. That was a never to be repeated, one-off,” Bruce said.
“It is unlikely to ever happen again that an audience will move that quickly from one station to another. You don't change your logo and suddenly expect a stampede of new listeners to come to you, these things happen over time.”
Bruce said it was “fair and reasonable” to expect the changes that SCA has made to the Today's Hit Network to take a bit of time to show up in the ratings. He said instead of looking for easy ratings, the station was looking to “build something sustainable.”
“For 2Day, this is really the first set of numbers, it puts us on the score boards. Today's results just reinforces that we're on a long road and that listener habits don't change over night” Bruce said.
“Nothing ever happens quickly in radio and we're more than comfortable with the idea that if we're good enough for long enough and we market aggressively that we will get to where we need to go.”
In terms of building the station Bruce said SCA will continue to market it aggressively through out the year including a great deal of below the marketing at events where “its listeners are”.
“Nothing really changes in that respect,” Bruce said. “ The tide will turn for us.”
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