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Key points
- The ABC is losing audience share to radio rivals.
- ABC’s radio chief is one of 11 people reporting to its new head of content.
- The broadcaster knows it has a problem as listeners move to digital audio.
The ABC has a problem: people aren’t listening to radio, at least not as much as they used to.
Founded as a radio broadcaster and long a dominant force on airwaves across the country, with talent such as Fran Kelly, Red Symons, Adam Spencer, Wendy Harmer and Jon Faine, the ABC’s most popular radio stations have had a generational shift. Now they face an existential crisis.
Like the rest of the industry, the ABC knows it has a problem; working out a solution is another matter altogether. But the national broadcaster, which will get $6 billion in government funding over the next five years to entertain and communicate with Australians on issues they care about, has to try.
Five years of ratings data from the industry’s official measurement provider GfK, obtained by this masthead, shows the scale of the challenge. The most popular radio stations are suffering from historic audience lows, with the flagship breakfast shows in Sydney and Melbourne delivering some of the worst ratings figures in more than five years. The problems aren’t confined to ABC’s metro and regional stations either, with national brands Triple J and Radio National also experiencing steady decline.
While the audience for ABC’s digital-only radio channels (which can be accessed in newer cars or via mobile) is rising, it’s not fast enough to offset the decline of some of its most popular broadcast programs.
Some factors driving the decline are beyond the ABC’s control: past budget cuts, the existence of Spotify, social media and a broader shift to podcasting have contributed. But other factors have also led to the ABC’s ratings falling in many markets, not just in absolute terms but relative to commercial rivals: talent changes and an inability to freshen up show formats have led to some of the worst ratings performances for the broadcaster in a decade. (Nine, the owner of this masthead, also owns commercial radio stations.)
The ABC announced its most recent attempt to fix the problem last week. It will roll radio, which was the core of a division known as “regional and local”, in with television to form an overarching “content” section.
ABC’s organisation chart tells the story of radio’s demotion. There is no “head of radio” position. Instead, the ABC will have an “audio content head”, reflecting its emphasis on people listening across apps and streaming services as well as the radio. That position will oversee what was once the “crown jewel” of the ABC, Radio National, along with Triple J, ABC Classic and other national stations. It’s just one of 11 roles reporting to Chris Oliver-Taylor, the newly appointed chief content officer. Other key ABC radio shows, such as RN Breakfast and Background Briefing, have been cut out and transferred to the news division.
ABC managing director David Anderson wrote to ABC staff last week in an attempt to reassure them, while Oliver-Taylor told staff the new structure would put his division’s focus on reaching digital audiences and simplifying processes.
“Radio is central to the ABC, our audiences and remains vitally important to our future,” Anderson wrote. But he added: “As Australian audiences are now moving from broadcast radio to streamed or on-demand audio: increasingly they want to hear from their favourite broadcasters and listen to preferred specialist content when, where and how they like.”
The BBC in the UK has gone further, signalling that it will shutter many of its traditional broadcast channels by 2030. “Over time this will mean fewer linear broadcast services and a more tailored joined-up online offer,” its managing director Tim Davie said in December last year.
The sixth annual Infinite Dial Australian audio study, published last June by Edison Research, said the number of Australians listening online grew by 8 per cent, reaching a total of 71 per cent of the population. In that market, Anderson told staff, the ABC already has top-rating podcasts and wants to do even more as audiences go increasingly online.
What’s becoming abundantly clear is that people are turning off traditional ABC radio. In one survey from 2018, ABC Sydney had 8 per cent of total radio audience in the market, a figure that had slipped to 5.9 per cent at the start of 2023. ABC Melbourne, which lost longstanding radio broadcaster Jon Faine during the five-year period, has fallen from an 8.1 per cent share to 5.8 per cent in the past five years.
ABC star Sammy J, like many of his colleagues, faces declining ratings.Credit: Joe Armao
Audience declines are most pronounced in the breakfast time slot, which runs from 5.30am to 9am, accounting for the performance of programs including Breakfast with Sammy J in Melbourne and ABC Sydney Breakfast with James Valentine.
The departure of ABC Sydney breakfast hosts Wendy Harmer and Robbie Buck has had a pronounced effect on numbers: while ratings fluctuated during their tenure, the time slot has fallen 2 percentage points in the year since they left the airwaves.
Cumulative audience – the de-duplicated number of people listening to a station for a quarter of an hour at a given point – has fallen from 364,000 to 342,000 in five years. But even Drive with longstanding host Richard Glover has taken a hit, losing 2.4 per cent share in its time slot.
In Melbourne, the decline in listeners during the breakfast slot is particularly pronounced. Despite attempts to maintain the share held by longstanding host Red Symons, who was fired in 2018, repeated changes to the line-up have also hurt the station.
More than 100,000 listeners are no longer tuning in to the breakfast program, and the time slot has fallen from a 10.1 per cent share to 7.3 per cent in five years. Audience share grew massively for host Sammy J during the Victoria lockdowns, with his share as high as 14.3 per cent at the end of 2021. But post-pandemic restrictions, that figure fell to 7.3 per cent at the start of 2023.
Wendy Harmer, pictured with her former co-host Robbie Buck, says she understands that radio needs to evolve but hopes the ABC is making the right changes.Credit: Janie Barrett
Former ABC Radio Canberra presenter Genevieve Jacobs – who is now managing editor of Region Media Group that publishes online news outlets including the RiotACT – is scathing of recent changes to local radio. “There’s been a wrongheaded pursuit of a younger demographic [with lighter, less local content] and that has been really regrettable in terms of alienating people who were dedicated listeners,” says Jacobs, who was ousted by the ABC in 2017.
Harmer, who went out on a high when she left ABC Sydney in 2021, saw a string of restructures in her years at the corporation, some with dubious justification. “It’s always a mystery, and you find that people you reported to in one office now occupy another floor or are in a different building,” she says. “It can be all very mystifying when you stand there in front of the lifts.”
But she emphasises that reports of radio’s death are premature. “Audio and visual content are two very different specialisations, so I hope they haven’t thrown the baby out with the bath water,” Harmer says.
It’s not just the metropolitan stations that have suffered declines. The departure of ABC RN breakfast host Fran Kelly, who hosted the program for almost 14 years, has caused a dramatic reduction in the number of listeners tuning in early in the morning. At the end of 2021, as Kelly departed, her show’s cumulative audience sat at 416,000. At the end of the first survey of 2023, following a year of Patricia Karvelas at the helm, that figure had fallen to 240,000. This has impacted ABC RN’s total audience share, which fell below 2 per cent for the first time in 2022 and has continued to drop in each survey.
For their part, ABC executives are grappling with how to deal with radio in the restructured organisation. They hired Dr Cherie Romaro, a veteran radio executive, earlier this year to tell them how to improve local and regional stations such as ABC Sydney and ABC Melbourne, with potential solutions including shorter interviews, changing presenters and a new music line-up. More investment in podcasts and digital audio channels is on the cards, while many staff members fear job cuts may be on the table too.
An internal ABC information page says the project, which is intended to ensure the ABC is meeting its audience’s needs, is almost complete and will be analysed by senior staff in coming months. “The new structure will strongly support the work being done in local radio to identify why audiences are listening for shorter periods – contributing to the drop in share – and how we can reverse that trend,” the page says.
If the ABC is to win the digital audio market without alienating its traditional broadcast market, the next few years are crucial. It has been handed a guaranteed $6 billion over five years by the Albanese government, giving the corporation newfound funding certainty. Yet money is still tight.
Papers from last week’s budget show the ABC’s employee budget goes up from $576 million this year to a peak of $596 million in 2025-26, but then drops more than $20 million the year after that as government grants expire.
An ABC spokesman confirmed the drop, saying the broadcaster believes the funding grants “will be considered in future budget processes”. Communications Minister Michelle Rowland wouldn’t commit to renewing the extra funding when it expired, but pointed to the Albanese government’s increased support for the ABC.
Rowland says the ABC’s choices on staffing – and she could have added everything else – are its own.
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