Melbourne's MIX - Going Going Gorn!
Seagull
How to lose 65% of your listeners in 4.5 years ...
12.0 Survey 1, 2001
10.2
8.3
8.7
9.6
9.8
7.6
7.3 Survey 8, 2001
6.0
6.3
7.1
7.0
6.2
6.2
6.3
6.4 Survey 8, 2002
6.3
6.0
5.9
6.3
7.4
6.6
5.9
5.8 Survey 8, 2003
5.7
6.4
6.9
5.9
5.5
5.6
6.5
7.2 Survey 8, 2004
6.0
6.5
5.6
4.5 Survey 4, 2005
The Herald Sun states that MIX's audience is only 3.3%
GM Steve Smith says "Mix's climb to the top was always going to be a
long journey."
Hello! Hello! (courtesy of the Man of Steel)
What climb?!?
Isn't it about time MIX dumped it's format (and name) and introduced a
wide adult format like Magic 693 plays. The first station on the FM
band to play vintage hits and evergreens will do really well in the
long term.
And for a name?
I'd like 3DB-FM ... but "Legends 101" will do.
CrowdedHouse
I guess that's the panelty you pay for throwing a bunch of no-names
into the Melbourne Breakfast Radio market... could be worse, that pair
could be working for 3MP!
One key reason that Mix101 is failing is that it's artists they are
playing all sound the same, the variety is poor.
Why are Ipods/MP3 players taking off? Variety of thousands of different
songs you can hear.
Gold104 (Mix's sister station) is the top FM station... why?
VARIETY - they mix up the music from rock to ballads, to pop from the
60s to 90s.
If you looked in many people's CD collections (No matter what age they
are) you'll notice there's always a mix of CD from a wide range of era
& styles.
Triple M are going up because of variety (though they need to work on
their programming), Fox is on the slide cause their playlist is too
tight, and Nova goes up & down, just like it's playlist.
The other key reason to match with the Gold104 Variety is the
Programming... that haven't done many radical changes, because their
audience likes things they way they are... Plus there jocks are well
known to the MELBOURNE market, have the MELBOURNE market feel about
them, and overall are bloody good jocks (Time to give Huggy a pat on
the back).
Yesterday when going for a job interview with a regional radio station,
i was asked to name an FM & AM station that I thought was the best in
Australia.
I named Gold104 for the reasons above, and 3AW for also having that
Melbourne feel, but also the solid reputation that they have built up.
And that everyone knowns in Melbourne that if a BIG news story happens
(like the start of the Iraq war) where do they all switch to? 3AW...
it's something in the minds of Melbourne people, that yes, 3AW is the
News station.
For Mix101, people don't know what it is, it's really more the "Poor
Cousin" of Gold104 then it's sister station - they have done everything
opposite and that's why they are in the gutter.
I remember the day Mix101 was launched and they had an open day at
Richmond. You could just sense talking to the announcers that the move
to dump the TT FM Name and format was a really bad move. Of course
there was all smiles, but you knew they weren't happy (plus the Night
Mix guy had just been given the arse - was his name Captain Midnight or
something like that?)
Maybe the last song of TT FM should have been "American Pie" with the
line "The day the music died"?
CrowdedHouse (I don't know how the people who program Mix101 sleep at
night)
radio...@yahoo.com.au
Is it true that there only live jocks during the day are Simon Dias
(who should be doing breakfast) and Lars P. (arvo) and the rest comes
from Sydney?
What should MIX101.1 do now???????
radio...@yahoo.com.au
Ray
doing arvos on WSFM so also automated from Sydney.
Seems onlty breakfast on Mix is live nowadays.
<radio...@yahoo.com.au> wrote in message
news:1119425047....@o13g2000cwo.googlegroups.com...
Blue Fig Tree
There may be a person around who has vast experience in the radio
industry, and can just overhaul the whole MIX/TT thing - to perhaps
shake the shit out of the place and give it kick up the arse to get it
on the right track ...
Just that Mix sounds like yuck at the moment - too smooth and nice for
its own good - has it been worried about LIGHT FM perhaps ? If so -
those fears should be quite unfounded.
Geez - I thought 3's was good for AM (SEN's doing ok with 3's) but its
piss poor for a Melbourne Metro station with network backing to only
score 3's !
ARN should be ashamed of MIX - and for the mess it created for itself
in Adelaide on the now MIX 1323 AM !
Blue Fig Tree
other - if this is the case - they're doing the job quite well !
Perhaps lessons should be learned from the period where Austereo
purchased GOLD 104, and closed everything - established FOX news on
Gold, and changed gold so it was no longer a threat to its prime
station FOX.
Thats what it sounded like anyway - even if not the case in reality -
who knows !?!?!?
CrowdedHouse
Not trying to plug Double X here, but maybe Mix101 should kinda take a
leaf out of the 3XX book and go Retro?
When Fox was at the top of their game they kinds had a pop/retro feel
about them.
Maybe the idea is for that Retro feel to go on Mix?
That should sound good on FM.
I remember hearing imaging for a Texas stations calling themselves
"Your Party Music Station".
Well maybe you can associate Mix with "Re-Mix" and create that retro
feel?
That would appease their current female market plus maybe bring in some
younger ones?
CrowdedHouse (looking for that gap in the market... and I should charge
them a consultants fee!)
BearCave
"Andrew Bayley" <SPAM?NOTHANKY...@yahoo.com.au> wrote in message
news:42b9463c$0$16492$afc3...@news.optusnet.com.au...
>
> > 4.5 Survey 4, 2005
>
> from what i can gather - this is the station's lowest overall figure since
> 1988 when "3TT" was just a newbie... and it's possibly the lowest for an
FM
> commercial station in Melbourne for over 20 years
>
> and MIX 101.1 breakfast is now being beaten by SEN!
>
>
BearCave
"Andrew Bayley" wrote:
>
> > 4.5 Survey 4, 2005
>
> from what i can gather - this is the station's lowest overall figure since
> 1988 when "3TT" was just a newbie... and it's possibly the lowest for an
FM
> commercial station in Melbourne for over 20 years
3TT's lowest rating was its debut survey, with 3DB rating 6.1% in its final
survey, followed by 3TT rating 3.9% in the next survey. Followed by 5.5%,
4.9% and then after 'The Classic Hits of Summer' campaign, 3TT almost
doubled its ratings to 8.6%
Can_do
Holmes) are on holidays (maybe forever? ) and Nick Michaels is filling
in - and seems to string it together ok - they are playing 'best of'
bits - and then they have Lars Petersen, Dave Wright, Byron and the
chick who does the love god thing - so I guess Simon Diaz is off sick
or on holidays too.
I agree the music is rather bland - too many songs by bands and singers
who all sound the same - for a station called MIX - there's not much of
it.
Andrew Bayley
> 4.5 Survey 4, 2005
from what i can gather - this is the station's lowest overall figure since
1988 when "3TT" was just a newbie... and it's possibly the lowest for an FM
commercial station in Melbourne for over 20 years
and MIX 101.1 breakfast is now being beaten by SEN!
Andy Grace
> I remember the day Mix101 was launched and they had an open day at
> Richmond. You could just sense talking to the announcers that the move
> to dump the TT FM Name and format was a really bad move. Of course
> there was all smiles, but you knew they weren't happy (plus the Night
> Mix guy had just been given the arse - was his name Captain Midnight or
> something like that?)
>
Actually his name was me.
You're thinking of Captain Turntable who left to go to the pre-launch
Nova 96.9 a few months earlier.
Yep we were between a 14 and 17 share at night back then, and beating
Kyle and Jackie O on Fox.
Livinia Nixon was shafted on the same day. Now she's back with Ed on
Temptation!
AG
Ty
"CrowdedHouse" <peterhol...@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:1119419112.6...@g49g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...
>
> I remember the day Mix101 was launched and they had an open day at
> Richmond. You could just sense talking to the announcers that the move
> to dump the TT FM Name and format was a really bad move. Of course
> there was all smiles, but you knew they weren't happy (plus the Night
> Mix guy had just been given the arse - was his name Captain Midnight or
> something like that?)
Captain Turntable. A.k.a Corey Layton a.k.a Tool Berry (sorry work in joke)
a.k.a Nova 100 Breakfast Producer a.k.a. Nova 100 Promotions Manager
A.k.a Twister
Ty
BearCave
"CrowdedHouse" wrote
> Maybe the last song of TT FM should have been "American Pie" with the
> line "The day the music died"?
Well, it was actually a Jennifer Lopez song and it had no significance at
all to the end of an era. There was a brief one minute talk break that
acknowledged the station was dropping its name, while also mentioning a few
names that had been on TT during its tenure. Then what followed was a very
annoying and confusing call-sign - 'The All New Mix 101.1', an awkward
looking, over-coloured logo and the blandest outdoor advertising for a radio
station ever created.
Before people accuse me of being bitter, let me add that it was precisely
this survey ten years that TT-FM reached 'number one overall'. That's
right, it did get to be number one for a single survey in 1995 with a 12%
share. This share grew to a 13% share the following survey, when it tied
for number one with two other radio stations - I think they were Fox and
3AW.
Truth is, the best advertising they ever ran was what ignited the brand in
the first place, while they were initially 3TT on the 1026AM frequency. I
seem to recall the same advertising agency looked after their campaigns from
1988 until beyond their FM launch in 1990. Other than a brief period when
both TT-FM and KZFM struggled to adjust to the new competitive FM
environment, TT-FM really was a brand that could do no wrong. As the 2001
figures indicate, the brand started to fall as soon as the format changes
were phased in at the start of 2001.
Interesting the point others make about 'variety' because the blandest, most
parity-type aspect of their branding is just that - 'Melbourne's Mix, best
variety, etc.' Yet that was the only aspect of the brand that was spared.
While the aspects of the brand that underpinned its appeal were considered
to be a 'cost burden'.
I seem to recall that even at the height of TT-FM's consistency, there were
'idealists' at headquarters wanting to 'Mix 106.5' the Melbourne station. I
can even recall the day I was reading the article in my local milk bar (an
example of my own cost saving measure :)
What they fail to grasp is the 'war on costs', like any war, still requires
respect for constraints. To be specific, the words of famous war writer,
Carl von Clausewitz (1780 - 1831) will no doubt echo in the minds of some
ARN executives upon reading this: By letting 'Bottom-line leadership' break
free from the constraints of 'branding stewardship', your strategy becomes
"something pointless and devoid of sense".
The point I've been trying to stress all this time is that in life,
'everything connects'. Therefore, you can't just think of costs in terms of
'fixed versus variable'. You also have to pitch different, quite opposing
variables against each other. It is the balance between these opposing
forces that creates the 'constrainsts' for long-term strategy. That's
because what makes them such opposites is precisely what forms a
relationship between the two (remember the Paula Abdul song - Opposites
Attract). It is the ability of the opposing forces to push for constraint
in the middle ground that creates the environment for long-term strategy.
Effectively, how both TT-FM and KZFM recovered from the trials of their 'AM
to FM conversions' is they started to become 'opposing forces' against each
other and the outcome was that 'both' stations made significant gains by the
end of 2002. As soon as KZFM changed to Gold 104, 101.1 TT-FM dumped its
'classic hits' heritage and spent six months gently changing their logo,
their music selections, then finally, their music format and positioning.
It is the ability of the opposing forces to push for constraint in the
middle ground that creates the environment for long-term strategy, the kind
that built market share for 'both' stations.
In regards to such constraint, in retrospect, SEN may have fitted better
within the ARN mix by simply 'supplying' limited sports comment and talkback
for a broader 5DN talk format at a cost cheaper than 5DN could supply themse
lves. Instead, by effectively removing all constraints of the 5DN brand and
incumbent listenership, the ARN leadership has successfully gone to 'war
without constraints' against its own branding stewardship, while 'making
peace' with (surrendering to) 5AA!
This same need for 'constraint' also works in politics, which is what makes
John Ferguson's article in today's Herald Sun, titled 'Labor wades to the
Right' one of the most interesting articles I've read all year.
Click here
http://www.heraldsun.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5478,15688022%255E50001
15,00.html for article (that is, if Google doesn't keep breaking my links :)
The two variables that get pitched against each other in Politics are
'Pragmatism versus Ideology', as distinct from 'Political Left versus
Right', because just as neither Leadership or Stewardship exclusively
influence the direction of a brand, both Labor and Liberal contain within
their organisations, both pragmatists and idealists (In Labor, its the
Social Justice-Left versus the Pragmatic-Right), in Liberal, its the 'wets'
versus the 'drys', much like the differences between types of dog food :)
Remember that next time you read a 'Liberal versus Labor' article. Just as
5DN went to war with itself (ARN leadership versus 5DN brand stewardship)
instead of going to war against 5AA and/or 891 ABC Adelaide, Labor's
leadership composition continues to struggle mainly because the composition
of its stewardship, including how it functions in Parliament (after July 1)
and how it engages with the broader electorate, is so badly bruised and
battered.
It's why Beazley has no choice but to talk in terms of 'long-term campaigns'
because quick-fix attempts at leader and leadership team compositions will
not be at all effective unless anchored to the discipline of getting the
brand stewardship composition right. The outcome will be determined by what
constraint between the two opposing forces, or lack thereof, exists in the
middle-ground. And yes, they are opposing forces, otherwise the media would
have no just cause to use terms like 'Howard's Battlers'.
When I started to predict doom and gloom for Mix 101.1 three years ago, I
wasn't really thinking quite as deeply as I am now. I simply observed at
the time that there seems to be a relationship between accounting and
marketing - that is, a relationship between 'opposing forces' - accounting
VERSUS marketing!
Now I can see more clearly that 'opposing forces' exist in all aspects of
life, which of course explains why half this planet is currently lit up by
the Sun, while the other half is in darkness :)
Effectively, dawn and dusk represents the 'constraint' that exists between
the two opposing forces. All that happens at the North and South Poles is
that you get you get six months of darkness, then six months of
light......and no doubt very extended dawns and dusks :).
What remains the same is that one will certainly always replace the other
eventually. That's why Anti-Ideology study interests me so much and why
struggling organisations such as those named here need to be mindful of how
to steer their competitive capacity away from the poles of long-term
darkness and towards the more sun-bathed Marketing equator :)
You cannot do this, however, without respecting 'the brand'. Not that
Branding is a new concept, although neglect of it has a way of making the
concept new again :)
Mix 101.1's latest attempt is 'Melboune's Smooth Mix'.
My suggestion is '101.1 TT-FM - Melbourne's Smooth Mix of the 80s 90s and
Now'. Had the brand been allowed to evolve into that without the
obstructions, I reckon Mix would have been enjoying better figures until
now.
The solution is to reclaim the station's heritage. For starters, marketing
examples such as the reuse of famous positioners like 'Which Bank?' and 'Go
Well Go Shell', even after long absences, rules out the argument that you
cannot bring back the name TT-FM.
Make no mistake, the only reason ARN will not bring back TT-FM is because of
the trade-off between the stewardship of branding discipline and the
bottom-line driven leadership style they prefer, a style that is simply not
performing for them in this instance.
However, speaking of 'opposing forces' and trade-offs, it must be noted that
Gold and Mix are probably also not opposed enough (both target overlapping
25-54 demos) which does create a problem, as 3MP found out by launching
Magic 693 too close to be opposing that it instead 'out-flanked' 3MP. The
problem being that Mix 101.1 may not experience a rise without Gold 104
experiencing a fall.
By contrast, DMG can probably build new radio stations in Sydney and
Melbourne without upsetting Nova market shares. Certainly, 5AA and Nova
91.9 in Adelaide co-exist in this way.
I suspect Labor's paradox is that it has to dare to be close in leadership
style to the Government (conservative, consolidating Beazley), yet must be
firmly opposed on Government policy that does not work in favour of
socio-economic compositions that would otherwise benefit mass-market
Australians.
I don't believe Labor has the 'luxury' of treating sociology and economics
separately like the Liberals have on Detention Centres, a 'wet dog food'
social issue and IR/tax reform, a rather 'dry dog food' economic issue).
Trust me, my dog much prefers 'wet food', and it would seem that so do most
journalists outside the Business and Finance Pages :D
If it makes you feel any better, even that mother of all brands, Coca-Cola
has its sticky moments, and I don't mean the type where you spill a cola
drink on your clothes :)
...From Justin
Can_do
BearCave
"Andy Grace" wrote
> Yep we were between a 14 and 17 share at night back then, and beating
> Kyle and Jackie O on Fox.
>
> Livinia Nixon was shafted on the same day. Now she's back with Ed on
> Temptation!
When you consider the story about how ARN dumped the duo that some years
later are now hosting the 18th most watched program on the OzTAM ratings
table, I think it is justice to hand down the worst possible punishment to
ARN management that you could imagine -
Yes, I refer to the lyrics of Avril Lavigne's Skater Boy song :)
"Five years from now, she sits at home
Feeding the babies, she's all alone
She turns on T.V. and guess who she sees
Skater boy rocking on MTV
She calls up her friends, they already know
And they've all got tickets to see his show
She tags along, stands in the crowd
Looks up at the man that she turned down
He was a skater boy
She said "Cya later boy"
He wasn't good enough for her
Now he's a superstar
Slammin' on his guitar
Does your pretty face see what he's worth?"
Paul Nicholson
Paul in Melbourne
"BearCave" <bearc...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:42bab1cf$1$16705$afc3...@news.optusnet.com.au...
Matt2 - Amstereo
> Maybe it is time for a country music format on 101.1 FM?
everywere else
Wombat Lover
Nothing is-a Melbourne wide down-a here. The Aspraints didnta get a licence
--
From Robert | Wombat Lover | Melbourne | http://www.surfnetvic.cjb.net |
CrowdedHouse
Reported in the backpages of today's Sunday Herald-Sun...
Former TT-FM Early Opener, Brad McKenzie, has been hired as the
producer for the "we only rate 3.3" Mix101 Breakfast Show. Can he save
the Marwick & Holmes sinking ship?
Meanwhile I have pondering that there is a similar sound between Mix101
& 3MP... both leaning towards Easy Listening...
OR as a friend in Geelong dubbed "Music to slit your wrists by"!
I think Magic693 have the "Easy Listening" market sown up, so Mix101 &
3MP should look elsewhere.
Maybe 3MP could be the "Jukebox Station" playing the "Rockin 60s &
70s", something that can be skewed slightly away from what Gold104 are
and aim at a large market demo?
CrowdedHouse (there's plenty of Melbourne Demos neglected... you just
have to look for them).
Ray
Gold caters for 30-54 market, they play 90s songs in their mix.
That is why I like the music 2CA play, top 40 hits from the 60s and 70s.
This is what Melbourne radio lacks.news:1119767518.1...@o13g2000cwo.googlegroups.com...
hu...@gold1043.com.au
matt cook
> There's-a one down Geelong way called "Hit Country" on 89.3
>
> Nothing is-a Melbourne wide down-a here. The Aspraints didnta get a licence
Radio 16 NTC has the licences for good coverage I believe...