Merrick Watts has called his new nationally syndicated drive show on Southern Cross Austereo's (SCA) Triple M a “true alternative” to other stations, with the show taking cues from talkback and focusing on long-form interviews.
The name of the show 'Merrick... And Australia', is itself a subtle nudge to its primary point of difference – that Watts will be hosting the show on his own after negotiations for a co-host, thought to be broadcaster Paul Murray, fell through.
“When a lot of people hear there is no co-host their reaction is 'oh,' because for the last 20 years in commercial radio that has not been the case” Watts told AdNews.
“We're not trying to reinvent the wheel, what we're doing is going back to the most simple and basic form of radio which is a single host with guests and callers.”
“In some ways the format of the show is not dissimilar to what you would hear on AM stations, it's just the content base is different to what you would hear on an AM broadcast.”
Watts said that while the show will still include music content, without a co-host he will be able to focus on listener-calls and long-form interviews, where the guest would act as almost a “guest-host”.
Given the competition around the drive slot in FM radio this year, Watt said his show will be a “true alternative in the most competitive drive market the country has ever seen”. For that reason, he's not sure where listener share could be poached from.
“I'm not trying to steal listeners from the other FM stations - potentially I could be taking listeners from AM,” Watts said.
“I don't know where they're going to come from, but maybe it's people that don't like certain music genres or don't like short-form interview, or don't like certain talkback topics, or people listening to podcasts.”
But Watts is confident the show will boost ratings in Triple M's drive slots country-wide, given, at 41, he sits in Triple M's core demographic and knows what content he finds compelling as a consumer.
“I am the audience,” Watts said. “I'm not trying to second guess what a 20 year old female is thinking, I'm the core audience.”
“Whenever I think of the Triple M audience I think about me and my mates and when I talk to listeners on air, I talk to them like they are my mates.”
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