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Newcastle TV ratings week 17, 2008

NBN continues to dominate the overall Newcastle TV viewing figures with another commanding performance last week.

Most watched programs:
1    NBN Evening News Sunday    NBN    89000
2    60 Minutes    NBN    87000
3    Underbelly    NBN    86000
4    NBN Evening News Monday to Friday    NBN    84000
5    Doc Martin    ABC    83000
6    RSPCA Animal Rescue    PRIME    82000
7    Sea Patrol II - The Coup    NBN    81000
8    David Attenborough’s - Life in Cold Blood    NBN    79000
9    NBN Evening News Saturday    NBN    74000
10    Midsomer Murders Rpt    ABC    73000

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Media Hunter has been inundated with mail this week after asking readers to suggest "How would you solve a problem like NEWFM?" The tongue-in-cheek competition offered up a chance to win a stained pair tracksuit pants and circa 1979 knitted Newtown vest to the person with the best suggestions on how to save the struggling station following its woeful results in the latest Newcastle radio survey.

Interestingly, the forum seemed to attract just as many ex-Caralis employees as it did radio listeners, many of whom took the opportunity to take pot-shots at the Supernetwork owner. The Real Bill C also waded into defense of his management tactics, although we suspect the writer of those comments may not actually reside at Pyrmont as suggested in the email address.

Despite numerous witty and catty comments, we did receive a large number of serious contributions, all of whom seemed to be genuinely concerned about the plight of the once dominant station and its effect on radio listening in Newcastle. The common theme of rescue was a return to a narrowly-focussed rock music format reminiscent of the Newcastle’s Best Rock, Fatboys era at the start of this decade. Readers suggested targeting males 18-39 with a rock format and a few good announcers, then being patient and sticking with the format for a few years. Most agreed that a ratings share of around 13.0 would be possible within a few years.

Considering that this was the overwhelmingly dominant recommendation, it seems fair that the prize goes to the first person to post the comment. Congratulations Greg, your tracky dacks and vest can be collected from
Radio 2SM, Level Three 8 Jones Bay Road, Pyrmont NSW 2009 (thats a joke too of course).

Meanwhile, it will be interesting to watch and listen to see if Bill Caralis and his current management take any notice of our suggestions or just continue to ignore the wishes of the market who have voted with their ears in recent years.

Source: David Dale, Sun Herald Blogs

Nine’s hopes of recapturing the week with Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire on Saturday were dashed when the ABC grabbed 1.4 million for Doc Martin, to Harry’s 1.3 million. And Seven’s last minute decision to replace Michael Palin’s New Europe with the thousandth repeat of Fawlty Towers proved justified, when John Cleese pulled 839,000 viewers — 100,000 more than his former Monty Python colleague.

By week’s end, audience shares in prime time were: Seven 29.0 per cent,
Nine 27.6, Ten 22.0, ABC 16.2 and SBS 5.3. The most watched shows of
the week were: 60 Minutes
(9) 1.73 m (apparently because it included a profile of Golden Ramsay);
Seven news Sunday (7) 1.68m; RSPCA Animal Rescue (7) 1.76m; Border
Security (7) 1.76m; and Bondi Rescue (10) 1.62m.

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In mid-2007, around the time Age of Conversation was launched, I sent some press releases to local media announcing the fact that a fellow Novocastrian had been published  as part of this unique world-wide effort.

A few days later I ran into one of the journalists who had received the press release and asked him whether he would be running the story. "Love to," he said "but management would hang me." He explained that his publication didn’t recognise bloggers, saw them as the enemy and would not be giving any column space to stories about them. It was an interesting reaction and telling of the paranoia in the traditional media about the emerging social media culture.

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Source: Radioinfo.com.au

Paul Arandale from KO fm in Newcastle has been appointed to the position of announcer at 2TM 92.9 fm in Tamworth.

Newsflash: 2HD’s longest serving sales representative, Peter Field has resigned. Ironically, his last day will be on 4 July, Independence Day in USA. Field has been working at 2HD since 1982.

He is the second long serving member of the sales team to leave the station in the last two months. Station Sales Manager Kathy Coleman went on stress leave in late February after reported conflicts with owner Bill Caralis over sudden changes to sales commission structures. Coleman is apparently still on leave but must be worried about any prospect of return to the station after Guy Ashford was hired in her position. Coleman has also been working for 2HD since the eighties.

Last September the station’s longest serving employee, Roger Clements, was forced to leave by Caralis under a "redundancy package". Roger was the Operations Manager at the time. Guy Ashford’s title is Sales and Operations Manager.

Source: Radioinfo.com

Current KO/NXFM Group Program Director Andrew Very has decided to leave his post in Newcastle to settle back in Brisbane with his young family. AV’s last day will be May 2.

Newcastle TV ratings week 16
NBN have really seemed to re-discover their mojo this year, gradually regaining the ratings swagger they lost last year. Week 16 saw NBN with 7 of the top 10 programs in Newcastle, while Prime and SC TEN could only manage one each. NBN also cleared out to an almost 10 point lead for the week. SC Ten are showing some improvement but still have a long way to go while the biggest improvement has been from ABC who are nipping at SC Ten’s heels.

Prime must be very concerned about the poor showing of previously high rating shows such as Grey’s Anatomy, Border Security and It Takes Two. Sure, last year they finished strongly but once again they are conceding a big led early.

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