Sure Nova’s ratings have dropped off. But Paul Thompson is at it again launching a radio station aimed at people born between 1960 and 1965. I wrote this for the Financial Times on the launch of Nova in Melbourne in 2002. Now as Crikey reports Thompson is at it again.
It’s anybody’s guess what programming tricks work in radio nowadays.
But Paul Thompson, chief executive of Daily Mail Group in Australia was
gob-smacked when his Melbourne station Nova hit the number one slot
with a 12.5 per cent audience share within 15 weeks of launch.
Thompson says: “Frankly, we have outperformed what is reasonable. We
cannot expect always to do so well. But frankly we don’t regard this as
normal. It simply performed beyond reasonable expectations.”
Melbourne’s ratings took the shine off Nova in Sydney. One year since launch it has moved up to the number three slot with an 8.3 per cent share. A more than fair performance.
Since 1996 DMG, 75 per cent owned by Daily Mail and General Trust and 25 per cent by Classic FM’s mothership GWR, has invested near A$500m (£193m) in 63 radio stations and licences. It seems to be doing something right. But how? It simply listened to its listeners and advertisers. Its audience asked for an edgy format mixing musical styles and fewer ads, a notion also popular with advertisers.
“Sounds different” is the Nova’s tag. And it does. The rule is that no more than two ads can be run in a row and no more than four or five minutes of ads will run in any hour. This compares with up to 12 minutes run by competitors.
This isn’t because Nova can’t sell ads, although it took four months of door knocking in Sydney before media buyers’ opened.
To make the economic model work Nova charges a premium. It claims that its share of ads is better than its audience share with media buyers really warming to the flexibility offered.
Dreadful retail ads are censured and advertisers encouraged to match advertising to the format. Usually within a slot nobody can dictate the exact time at which an ad runs. But Nova will run an ad to the minute. It will even link them to songs. For example, Mitsubishi runs ads featuring the New Radicals, next to music by the New Radicals. Brewer CUB runs ads next to songs by local pop combo Killing Heidi.
Perhaps the instincts of rival Austereo’s PR consultant were correct when he initiated a bogus letter writing campaign to MPs, which resulted in a Parliamentary Inquiry into regional radio. It ended with DMG receiving substantial damages and a public apology in August 2001.
Thompson, who coincidentally built the Austereo group until an ownership shift in 1995, has another one coming for his old employer. DMG is preparing for the launch in Perth sometime before next year, its second venture with Dr Tony O’Reilly’s Australian Radio Network.
No doubt Thompson’s old hand has plenty of new tricks.