ARN’s chief content officer Duncan Campbell is “very comfortable” with Kyle & Jackie O‘s Melbourne start date of 29 April, and is confident the momentum will be sustained until launch.
While industry speculation about the launch date has been rife since January, Campbell tells Mediaweek: “To be honest, the plan was never to launch in January – we had to make sure the technology was right first, and we had to do a fair bit of upgrading of networking. We also moved out of Macquarie Park to North Sydney, so the combination of those meant that meant the delay.”
When asked what sort of feedback the ARN team has had in response to the upcoming launch, Campbell laughs. “One Melbourne journalist summed it up best – it’s trashy, but it’s fun, and it has universal appeal. It’s not designed for the media bubble of Sydney or Melbourne, it’s designed to work in Preston or Penrith.”
According to Campbell, the biggest hurdle ahead of the Kyle & Jackie O Show’s launch in Melbourne is changing the perception of Sandilands’ shock jock style – which he says “is not as prominent as it was.”
“The show has more dimension to it than it ever has, and Kyle is now more accessible than he ever has been. I think Melbourne will embrace it – it’s an exciting new show, which they haven’t had for quite a while.”
Campbell admits that he thinks it will take a while for the full impact of the show’s debut to become clear, and that it won’t be a “splash and straight to number one result in the first survey”, but that they’ll build up swiftly.
“It’s a gamble, but Christian O’Connell was a gamble as well. We’ll see whether we can get the trifecta – Kyle & Jackie O moving over from 2Day FM, signing Christian O’Connell, and Kyle & Jackie O networking into Melbourne.”
Last week, the duo’s Melbourne debut date was confirmed – which will come halfway through survey three. Byron Cooke has been holding down the breakfast show since Jase & Lauren were dumped from the KIIS 101.1 breakfast slot to make room for the Sydney radio juggernauts.
Around the network
Campbell describes the first survey to Mediaweek as “a bit of a mixed bag” for ARN, and a good indicator of how the network is going. He also makes the point that despite the hype around Kyle and Jackie O’s move into Melbourne, it’s crucial “not lose sight of the other networks.”
Having ended the year as Sydney’s top FM station, KIIS 106.5 has dipped a point for a 10.5% share, but kept the title of top cume with 1,456,000 – up by 25,000. WSFM dipped 1.5 points for a share of 7.5%, the biggest slide of the Sydney survey.
In Melbourne, Gold has climbed back into FM leadership with 2.4 point break over its rival in The Fox. The results in breakfast were also flipped with Christian O’Connell, Jack and Pats reclaiming the FM breakfast podium. On KIIS 101.1, Byron Cooke going solo in breakfast recorded a cume of nearly half a million.
Dipping 1.8 points, Brisbane’s KIIS 97.3 recorded a share of 8.2%. In breakfast, Robin, Terry and Kip have dipped 1.3 points to record a 9.7% share.
“We’ve got some areas we need to work on, but some really strong results – particularly in Gold and KIIS 101.5, even though it came back a little bit, and Mix 102.3 was very strong in Adelaide. So no complaints from us.”
The biggest focus for Campbell’s team is Brisbane’s KIIS 97.3 – “We believe that Robin and Kip have loads of potential, we’ve just got to get that dynamic working properly.”
In Sydney, Campbell adds: “I’m not concerned about WSFM, smoothfm was marketing this survey, plus the school holidays ran for the first three weeks in New South Wales.”