The Light's On But Nobody's Home
Sydney Morning Herald
Monday October 13, 2003
There was a time you could be confident your favourite radio show was local and live. These days, it could have been recorded earlier on the other side of the country. Sue Javes looks at how networking has changed radio.
James Brayshaw is sharing a personal anecdote with Peter Berner, Mike Fitzgerald, Tim Smith, Brigitte Duclos and Matt Parkinson on the Triple M breakfast show. It's an engaging story any couple could relate to about his wife's spending habits. She agrees to keep her credit card at home but still manages to blow their limit by making purchases over the phone. Brayshaw's co-hosts egg him on, drop asides and fall about laughing as the story reaches a climax.
What few Sydney listeners would realise, however, is the six presenters are thousands of kilometres apart. Brayshaw is at home in his tracky dacks somewhere in the Adelaide Hills, Berner and Fitzgerald are at Triple M's Bondi Junction studios and Smith, Parkinson and Duclos are at Triple M's St Kilda studios in Melbourne. With improved sound technology, scratchy interstate phone lines have been replaced by what Austereo calls "the cyber studio".
Lars Peterson is familiar to Sydney radio listeners as the DJ who plays classic rock songs on WSFM every afternoon. To Melbourne audiences, however, Peterson is the new lunchtime presenter on Mix, a female-friendly, easy listening music station. Each day before his Sydney show, Peterson digitally records his voice in a North Ryde studio using radio computer software; this is then downloaded by Mix in Melbourne and played between songs. Peterson works for the Australian Radio Network, which owns radio stations around the country and can use an announcer's voice-track to create programs in any of its markets. It's not called pre-recording but "virtual live" radio.
Crazy MC (Mike Carroll, when he's not on air) usually buys his dinner at Darling Harbour before settling into his studio at 2SM in Pyrmont for the evening to play the latest hits for teenagers. But no young people in Sydney will hear his show. Instead, a satellite dish perched on top of the 2SM building transmits his program to 13 regional FM stations scattered across NSW and Queensland.
In the studio next door, Graeme Gilbert is talking to a listener in Newcastle. His program is going out to the same towns but this time on the AM band, targeting slightly older listeners. In 11 smaller regions, including Mudgee, Gunnedah and Armidale, these announcers enjoy great ratings. Their boss, Bill Caralis, owns the only FM and AM commercial radio stations in town.
When the Daily Mail Group (DMG) launched Nova in Sydney two years ago, it boasted all its programming was local and live. It's not a philosophy practiced by the same company in regional Australia. The British-owned DMG network has 59 country radio stations, stretching from Manjimup in Western Australian to Cairns in Far North Queensland to Bendigo in Victoria. Programming comes from three base stations or "hubs" in Townsville, Albury and Bunbury.
These days the typical country DJ gets to work a few hours before his or her shift begins to sift through emails and faxes from more than 10 feeder stations. For each small market, they pre-record casual references to weather, the local sports teams and upcoming community events. These are "dropped" into the networked show to create a local, home-grown feel, even though the DJ is often hundreds of kilometres away. Apart from the occasional mispronunciation of a street name, the locals are none the wiser.
Or are they?
Radio networking has proliferated in the past decade; in regional Australia it has increased 80 per cent. Networking has played some part in Australian radio since the 1930s, but the combination of modern technology, corporate cost-cutting and changes to the broadcasting rules have led to an explosion. The sale of new radio licences and the relaxation of media-ownership rules has allowed a small number of proprietors to swallow up a large number of stations. Multiple stations with single corporate identities compete for shrinking advertising revenue.
As a result of satellite technology, digital broadcasting and sophisticated computer programs, radio companies have the means and incentive to increase their networking further. Put simply, it allows fewer companies to do more with less and reap the profits.
What does it mean for listeners? Better-quality, more-sophisticated programs delivered by top-notch presenters, as the radio proprietors suggest? Or watered-down, homogenised programming that pays lip service to local needs, as its detractors claim?
Radio proprietors know networking is a dirty word, implying cheap programming with little regard for listeners. But they say technology has changed the face of networking, enabling stations to retain a local service while also giving more Australians access to high-calibre programs.
"It's a real positive for the audience because they are exposed to the best radio talent Australia has," says ARN's program director, Jeremy Millar.
Late last year, ARN axed its local night-time shows in Adelaide and Melbourne and replaced them with Richard Mercer's Love Song Dedications, which is produced in Sydney. Before the show each night, Mercer pre-records commentary specifically for Adelaide and Melbourne listeners, which is dropped into the program.
"The content of a show and the relevance it has for listeners is more important than locality," Millar says. "Everyone relates to love and romance."
Mike Perso, head of DMG's regional radio service, says "pretty much" all of the stations within his network have their own local breakfast shows before switching to the network hub at 10am.
"You need that intimate local connection and presence in breakfast and our breakfast presenters are very involved in the local community," he says. "But after breakfast, if the content is strong, it doesn't matter whether it's local or not. Our ratings prove that."
Veteran Sydney announcer Ian MacRae, who runs a radio school in Sydney and publishes a monthly radio newsletter on the web, is not convinced. "Many of the smaller stations couldn't survive without some networking, but it's gone too far," he says. "To me, radio is all about being involved in the local community. When you've got someone 3000 kilometres away doing the program and pretending it's local, it just doesn't work. People in the country don't want a hot-shot, city-sounding station. They want their station."
Listeners are not just sharing radio announcers with other markets, but also competitions and news services. The Southern Cross Network sends its city news bulletins to 177 of Australia's 253 commercial stations. According to the Australian journalists association, the MEAA, the number of journalists employed in commercial radio has fallen from 650 to 250 in the past 10 years. And don't bother trying to win a cash prize on FM radio: you're often competing with listeners from other capital cities.
Independent Federal MP Peter Andren, who has felt the changes first hand in his Bathurst electorate, says local communities are frustrated at losing their voice but feel powerless to change it. "Country radio stations have become the slaves of networks, with owners showing more loyalty to bottom-line profits than audience service," he says. "The local connection is being replaced by disembodied voices and music just filling the air space. Most listeners don't want a manufactured, hyped-up product, they want local announcers who know where the corner of Bing and Summer streets is.
"In Orange, there is almost no local content on the three commercial stations. The importance of those stations to the local community before networking was clear in 1987 when bushfires threatened the Mt Canobolas area. If it happened today we'd be lucky if the presenters could pronounce the name correctly, let alone provide local knowledge during the emergency."
MacRae cites a near disaster in regional America last year when a train derailed, releasing a cloud of poisonous gas. Police tried to notify the local communities but all six radio stations owned by Clear Channel, which also owns 50 per cent of ARN in Australia, were being run by computer from another city.
Nothing that extreme has happened here, though ARN's Sydney stations were caught out two years ago when bushfires swept through Sydney's outskirts on Christmas Day. WSFM and Mix were locked up and running on automation, so listeners in threatened areas were oblivious to the possible danger.
Networking is not just an issue for the bush. Shows originating in Sydney are sounding more generic to accommodate listeners in other parts of Australia. Most stations network at night and on weekends but daytime networking is also increasing.
Two months ago Triple M launched a new breakfast show and a new drivetime show for both the Melbourne and Sydney markets. If the idea works, Adelaide and Brisbane
will be included as well. One of the unwritten rules of Sydney radio is that a breakfast show must be local.
Triple M is aware of the dangers. Listeners left in droves some years ago when it nationally networked The Richard Stubbs Show from Melbourne. Triple M now runs networked programs for all but seven hours of the day, but Austereo CEO Michael Anderson says The Cage and The Whole Shebang are different.
"The Richard Stubbs Show was a disaster," he says. "A very strong Melbourne show was stripped of its parochialism and made blander to blend into other markets. With these new shows, the presenters are in both markets, broadcasting simultaneously. There's no comparison in television. It would be like watching The Panel on Channel Ten with each presenter located in another state, but interacting in the same way.
"While Hot 30 [2Day's networked night show] or Phil O'Neil [Triple M's networked night show] do save us money, that's certainly not the goal with The Cage and Shebang. The goal is to create compelling entertainment."
So, if networking in all its various modern forms is a positive development for listeners, why do stations go to such lengths to disguise it?
"The Panel doesn't say, 'We're from Melbourne and it's raining down here tonight,' Anderson argues. 'They're not trying to hide the fact they are in Melbourne - everyone knows they are - it's just irrelevant to the audience. We could say, 'Beaming to you from three states', but whoopy-do. Listeners want to know if you're funny or not."
Says DMG's Perso: "It's something we don't make a big deal about. But if listeners ask, we tell them. We want it to sound local but we won't lie about it."
Some networked shows on commercial radio
Southern Cross News
John Laws
Stan Zemanek
Love Song Dedications - Richard Mercer (pictured)
Wilbur Wilde
The Cage
The Whole Shebang
Judith Lucy and Peter Rowsthorn's Friday Shout
The Phil O'Neil Show
The Chaser Boys
The Local
Kyle Sandilands and
Jacki O's Hot 30.com
Take 40
Rove
Loaded
Rick Dees
Hot Hits
Best of Merrick and Rosso
Tricia Duffield
Graeme Gilbert
Ray Hadley's Continuous Call Team
2KY's Sky Racing.
Australia's top five networks
Network: Austereo
Stations: 10 metro stations, including 2Day and Triple M
Potential Audience: 58.5% of Australian listeners
Network: DMG Radio (British-owned)
Stations: Three metro stations (Nova) and 59 regional stations (Star, Hot FM, Heritage)
Potential Audience: 56.2%
Network: Southern Cross Broadcasting
Stations: Six metro stations, including 2UE
Potential Audience: 52.5%
Network: Australian Radio Network (US- and Irish-owned)
Stations: Seven metro stations, including WS FM and Mix
Potential Audience: 50.8%
Network: 2SM Super Network
Stations: One metro station, 29 regional stations
Potential Audience: 27%
© 2003 Sydney Morning Herald