Stephen Beers shows off 3AW’s vinyl collection.
(This article was originally written for The Swinburne Standard in April 2018)
Walking into the 3AW offices, faces smile at you from the walls. Steve Price. Tom Elliot. Neil Mitchell. The faces greet you with a familiar friendliness. Familiarity is the goal for radio in a modern Melbourne, and creating a community where the listeners feel at home is what they strive for. I’m ushered into a meeting room, the walls of which are covered by shelves full of old vinyls. The collage of coloured sleeves lining the room form an irreplaceable collection, and a record player sits in the corner to make use of them. Such technologies as vinyl have been largely left in the past, but not radio. In a world of rapid technological advancement, the radio industry has shown its flexibility in embracing new developments while still delivering familiarly formatted content.
I spoke to three figures in the Melbourne radio scene, who shared their experiences of the adaptive nature of the industry, the community-driven principles that shape it, and their views on the future of the radio industry in Melbourne. Stephen Beers is the station manager at 3AW, which boasted the largest audience in the latest GfK survey of Melbourne radio listenership. Shaun Gough is the content director of Triple M, Melbourne, which is part of Southern Cross Austereo (SCA). Bryan Madigan is the operations manager at Australian Radio Network (ARN), which operates stations such as GOLD 104.3 and KIIS 101.1.
Building a community
Creating a community of loyal listeners is a priority for modern radio stations, and finding new ways to interact with the audience is a driving force in the industry.
3AW’s Stephen Beers believes that understanding your audience is one of the most important aspects of modern radio. “It’s a community of people” says Beers.
“We serve that community, and we know who they are.” Beers mentions how live and local content is essential to growing the station’s community. “It’s got to be live,” says Beers. He proudly mentions how only an hour of broadcast a week is pre-recorded. “As soon as you go pre-recorded, you’ve lost the ability for you audience to interact.” He is adamant 3AW would never nationalise their popular breakfast shows. “The breakfast program is just Melbourne, it has to be,” says Beers.
“If something happens out in the street right now, we want to talk about it.”
Triple M’s Shaun Gough is also a strong supporter of local content, and believes it is an important part of the content offered by radio, especially in breakfast programing. “(Local content provides) opportunities to reflect the city that these people live, work and play in.” In building a community around their station, Gough believes that being able to “relate and connect” with the hosts is essential. “If you’re not familiar with something … it inhibits connection” says Gough.
“You need to have an affinity with something before you can love it”. He believes that a station’s audience should be its first consideration. “You should be putting your listeners at the centre of what you do with your shows and your music format.” Gough believes that getting a balance between familiar and new when choosing music is a “science”.
“The trick is picking the right new stuff. If you want to attract a larger number of listeners you want to be playing music that’s familiar, and talking about things they can relate to.” Gough mentions how the Triple M Club, an online community for Triple M listeners, is used to gain feedback, as well as build loyalty through engagement and special offers. He says the club has more than 100,000 members, and is a core part of building their community.
ARN’s Bryan Madigan believes that to make the listeners feel a part of the station’s community, the station need to frequently engage with them. “We try to make them feel a part of the stations as much as possible.” Part of this is delivering the content they need, specifically local news, weather and traffic, which “will always be a priority for listeners.”
Adapting to technologies
The Melbourne radio industry has been quick to embrace emerging technologies, utilising such arrivals as the internet to expand their stations and the communities around them. Stephen Beers is far from worried about the increasing prominence of the internet; he welcomes it. “Going back historically, the internet was going to kill radio” says Beers.
“It’s actually made it stronger”. He says the increasing prominence of the internet has created more opportunities for the radio industry to thrive. “What’s really helped is that it’s easier for people to get us,” says Beers.
“If you haven’t got your radio with you”, Beers gestures to my mobile on the table, “this is now your radio.” These improvements in technology have only helped build a community around the station. “We’ve actually branded ourselves as ‘the original social media’” says Beers. The immediacy of radio is something he believes new formats such as podcasts can never replace. “If you’re in traffic and Ross Stevenson says something funny, and you look and four other people are laughing, you feel a part of a community.”
Shaun Gough holds a firm belief that the flexibility of radio is what has helped it continue to thrive. “(The radio industry) can easily shift and take advantage of innovations that present themselves” says Gough. “The great thing about radio is its ability to react and its immediacy, whether that’s on air or in the embracing of technology. It’s the same principle.” He believes that other media forms like print have been “militant” in their resistance to change.
“We can’t just say ‘we’re going to continue to execute broadcast radio the way it’s always been done’” says Gough.
“We need to identify opportunities and adapt to them.”
Bryan Madigan says that ARN is aware of the increasing prominence of technologies such as digital radio, and has aligned themselves with digital broadcasting service iHeartRadio to stay “on top of the ever changing landscape.” Diversifying distribution and reach is essential in Madigan’s view, and he says ARN seek to utilise emerging technologies to get content across. “Limiting ourselves to radio (broadcasting) as a means to get our content across would be a big mistake”.
Looking to the future
There is positivity in the future of radio in Melbourne, and optimism in radio’s ability to thrive by adapting to whatever may come. Stephen Beers is confident in future success of the Melbourne radio industry, citing a national growth of 200,000 listeners last year. “Radio is still the most consumed media in the mornings,” says Beers. He also believes that though the delivery method of radio may change, the concept of a radio program will remain. “It’s one person talking to one person, but it’s not. It’s one person talking to 200,000 single people at any one time.”
Shaun Gough believes the outlook for radio is strong because of its ability to adapt to new technologies on the horizon. He believes that SCA’s practice of development and succession planning for talent is part of the innovative approach the Melbourne radio industry is heading in.
Madigan is of the personal opinion that radio will continue to evolve into a more personalised content provider, and integrations with music streaming platforms such as Apple Music and Spotify are possible. “Eventually radio will not program music for the audience, the audience will program their own music.”