Media Insider: Truce in radio survey wars - new Radio Broadcasters Association chief executive Alistair Jamison speaks

Alistair Jamison is the new CEO of the Radio Broadcasters Association. Photo / Michael Craig

Radio survey day is always a massive internal operation at our two biggest commercial radio networks, NZME and MediaWorks. Teams of station managers, marketers and executives will lock themselves in war rooms, pore over top-secret, embargoed results, find an angle and then - voila - at 1pm, the press releases and internal messages roll.

And everyone’s a winner - Station A is #1 for cat-lovers from Levin; Station B has the most 30+ household shoppers listening at 2am. The competition is either ignored or rubbished and everyone heads to their respective survey-day parties to celebrate their wins... or wash away their woes.

And while the industry is as competitive as ever, NZME and MediaWorks are planning a truce in their public commentary this year, with new Radio Broadcasters Association (RBA) chief executive Alistair Jamison leading a charge for a stronger, more united marketing position.

Certainly, we should not expect MediaWorks, as they have in the past, to crow about any ascendancy in music radio share, or NZME, as they have in the past, championing the gap between Mike Hosking, Newstalk ZB, and the rest of the industry.

While news media may well pick up those angles, Jamison can only see what he describes as a “massive opportunity” for the radio industry to tell a more strategic story about its reach, engagement, and importance.

In his new role, he is tasked with promoting radio and helping the industry attract more commercial revenue and maintain healthy audiences.

Jamison has been meeting with a broad range of industry players and presenting back to leaders and executives at NZME, MediaWorks, and others. There is agreement, he has told them in a presentation, around the industry needing to be aligned. It says “we need a voice” and “there are great stories not being told”.

The presentation outlines some of the common themes and thoughts Jamison has been hearing, including needing “case studies and proof points”; “a clear ‘why radio?’ we can all use”; “digital upsell/better digi story” and “blow up survey results, it’s a f***ing waste of time”.

That last one plays to the nature of the industry. Radio industry participants are among the most colourful of all media; extremely passionate and loyal to their medium. They are upbeat and, in Jamison’s own words, “quite inspiring actually”.

Once the radio bug bites, it’s hard to find an antidote - many are in the game for life, often crisscrossing between the major broadcasters. Some people have even described the industry as almost cult-like.

Jamison is striving to make the most of that passion. He wants to move agencies’ and potential advertisers’ perceptions of radio - and audio more generally - out of a no-man’s land.

“One of the key things, talking to a few people, is that there’s not a strong view - there’s not a strong positive, there’s not a strong negative. It’s not top of the priorities. The opportunity is to elevate the time that agencies spend considering, and equally in the direct channel.”

He is superbly placed to lead the charge, having spent more than 25 years in the media industry - much of that in advertising agencies, and most recently as the CEO of Publicis.

Jamison is a colourful character himself - I recall he wasn’t short of a view when we launched the Herald on Sunday in 2004. To be fair, it did take a couple of years for the paper to truly find its feet - he was on the money.

“I think the fact that I can genuinely advocate with the lens of a client and an advertiser is really beneficial in terms of what needs to be achieved,” Jamison tells Media Insider of his new role.

The facts and data roll off his tongue. Around 2.5 million Kiwis a day - and 3.4 million a week for an average 15 hours - tune into radio. More than a million Kiwis are engaging each month digitally, through streams and podcasts.

“There are a wide number of reasons to consider it as a broadcast channel - its flexibility, its ability to engage deeply, the trust or the relationship between a listener and the on-air talent,” says Jamison.

“It’s still phenomenal to this day that people are so connected. There’s a whole range of benefits in there. It can still play a massive role in a modern media landscape.”

The RBA represents 20 member networks and stations operating on more than 750 commercial radio frequencies and digital platforms. Jamison takes over the CEO role from Jana Rangooni who has moved into a newly created Independent Chair role.

Jamison himself - and here he plays well in terms of naming stations from all the main companies – says he listens to a mix of Newstalk ZB, RNZ National, George and - “when the kids are in the car” - The Edge. He’s also “rediscovered” bFM.

Newstalk ZB's Mike Hosking. Photo / NZME

“Having started this role, I’ve tried to get into the habit of quite regularly trying different things. I’m probably a classic radio listener in that I don’t have a single go-to.

“I think, again, one of the strengths of audio, is that it can actually play to different times of day, different emotion and, and I think that’s an opportunity for the creativity piece as well.

“You know, if you think about the mindset that someone’s got on a Monday morning, dragging their ass to work, versus on a Thursday night. That’s one of the few channels that can be that flexible.

“I think there’s a lot of people that have strong loyalty to radio brands but within that they probably still graze quite a few. The numbers would reflect that.”

He also tells of radio’s importance in people’s time of need, citing recent live coverage and updates of civil defence emergencies including Cyclone Gabrielle in Hawke’s Bay and other North Island areas.

Podcasts, he says, continue to be a massive opportunity, many of which are a natural extension of radio. The vast majority of top-20 podcasts in the New Zealand pod-ranker charts have been created by radio teams, he points out.

“If you think about a car environment, which still remains hugely important to broadcast radio, there will be some change there over time that will make digital listening a bit more seamless and easier.

“Clearly our ambition needs to be getting to a full audio measure. I was always pretty heavy on what a fit-for-purpose measurement of total audience in New Zealand looks like.”

So what can we expect when the first radio survey results of the year are released this coming Thursday?

“All of the feedback that I’ve got is - it’s a bit brutal - but that the industry is doing itself a disservice with ‘everybody wins’. I think for this role to be successful, it is not about one network winning over the other.

“It’s clearly about the channel in its broadest sense, succeeding against the big guys [tech giants such as Apple, Spotify] and against other media channels as a whole.”

The survey data will still be important for the programming, content, and trading teams, he says.

But also: “Actually using that point in time for it to become an industry-led conversation and an industry celebration of the strength of all the things that audio can deliver for a client and all the reasons that, as an advertiser, you should be considering it.

“I would hope that [this] week, you know, that that’s the start of a journey.”

* Editor-at-Large Shayne Currie is one of New Zealand’s most experienced senior journalists and media leaders. He has held executive and senior editorial roles at NZME including Managing Editor, NZ Herald Editor and Herald on Sunday Editor and has a small shareholding in NZME.