Despite a scandal last year which saw a mass exodus of advertisers from the Kyle & Jackie O Show, audiences still love it, according to Southern Cross Austereo's Guy Dobson.
In today's Nielsen radio ratings survey, which measures metropolitan audiences between 15 January and 11 February, 2Day FM saw its audience share drop 1.1 percentage points in the breakfast spot. But it still remains the highest rating FM breakfast show, with 10.1% audience share in the Sydney market.
Dobson, SCA's head of radio, said the slight drop has nothing to do with the Kyle Sandilands drama from last year, which saw the radio host launch a verbal attack on a News Limited journalist, calling her a “fat slag” and threatening to hunt her down. The outburst led to a mass exodus of advertisers from the show.
Dobson told AdNews, “Survey one cannot really be compared to the last survey of 2011, because there is a whole summer in between. Triple J saw a lift because of the summer festivals and the Hottest 100, and this affects the stations with younger audiences. Nova was impacted as well as us. Also, if you look to Melbourne, our Fox FM station [which is also part of the national Today network] was also hit, and there is no Kyle situation there.
“If you look at last year, you'll see that Kyle & Jackie O are sitting where they normally sit in terms of audience share. Have we grown audiences, time will tell. But our audiences love that show.”
Dobson would not comment further on the advertiser exodus from the show, only saying, “We've already said our piece, we are talking about the ratings today”.
In Sydney, the overall ratings winner for the period was once again Macquarie Radio Network's 2GB, at 13.4% share. The 2Day network saw its overall share drop 1.6 percentage points, while the Triple M network saw its audience share lift 1.7 percentage points to 6.7% audience share.
In the Melbourne market, Fairfax Radio's 3AW took the top spot, despite dropping 0.8 percentage points to 12.8% audience share. DMG's Nova saw its audience share jump 1.5 points to 8.5% share.
Australian Radio Network (ARN) powered in both the Brisbane and Adelaide markets. In Brisbane, ARN's 97.3FM was the winner, with 14.1% audience share, while in Adelaide, ARN's Mix 102.3 took out the top spot with 14.1% share.
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