96fm picks up youth share

Southern Cross Broadcasting’s FM station, 96fm, has scooped the recent Nielsen Media radio survey six, winning its core demographic of 25-39 year-olds as well as making significant gains in the youth market.

96fm jumped 7.7 percentage points in the 18-24 market, accounting for 20.8 per cent of the market, second behind Nova on 26.5 per cent.

But the significant increase did not have major ramifications for rivals 92.9 and Nova 937, which target the 18-34 age group.

Both stations recorded only slight drops in market share.

However, Southern Cross Broadcasting general manager Declan Kelly was keen to highlight wins for the station across the listener categories.

“We’re number one in all people under 40, all people 18-34, all people 18-39, all people 25-34, all people 25-39. I’m looking very hard for the negative here,” he said.

The competition for listeners aged 25-34 has been competitive this year and is something that was noticeable for Austereo’s 92.9, according to Austereo general manager Linda Wayman.

She said while 92.9 came out number one in terms of female audience from 25 to 34 years, it was ranked fourth overall.

“That’s our target so we are very happy with that but we do need to broaden it,” Ms Wayman told WA Business News.

“92.9 is always in danger of being squeezed because Nova and 96fm want part of that market too, so it’s hard for 92.9 to clear the pack, but we’ve held our ground.”

Ms Wayman said Mix 94.5 continued to dominate despite 96fm targeting an older market.

“We’re number one 25-54 and that’s a broad market, and that’s where we want to be,” she said.

“We have 27.2 per cent of the market while 96fm has 17.1 per cent.”

According to Marketforce group media and communications director Simon te Brinke, the variances between radio surveys is sympto-matic of the volatile radio industry.

96fm had a 10.5 per cent share of the 18-24 market in Survey 2, 21.9 in Survey 3, 17.8 in Survey 4, 13.1 in Survey 5 and in the latest survey, Survey 6 it has a 20.8 per cent share.

While some in the industry have called for electronic measuring to try and smooth out the occasional swing in statistics, Mr te Brinke said it was a matter of tracking performance of each station across the medium.

“There’s a lot of other factors that come into it, like how a station has changed on-air content, whether it’s changed its talent, its brand position against other media and what the other stations are doing,” Mr te Brinke said. “If a station invests in TV [advertising] for three surveys you can expect that it will dent the other stations, but when it’s finished the audience typically goes back.

“It’s a bit like how Channel Seven borrowed audience during the Olympics.

“As media channels continue to fragment, core audiences such as 25-39 year olds become increasingly difficult to reach. This will be the group where most fluctuations will occur in the radio game over the next 12-24 months.”

Initiative Media media group head Sue Taylor said 96fm’s performance had been solid this year.

“96fm is growing from strength to strength, to grow in the core demo and be strong in the younger end,” she said. “It will be very positive for them.”