MediaRoom: Another Mai-ty shake for Auckland’s radio market

Comment: How’s your favourite radio station performing against its rivals for audience in a market that’s struggling for cut-through and advertising revenues?
With RNZ’s announcement on Thursday of declining radio audiences for its National and Concert stations, a full view of the NZ radio market is now possible from two separate surveys by GfK.
When combined into the commercial rankings, RNZ National’s weekly nationwide audience for the second ratings survey of 2024, at 495,000, puts it in sixth place after the commercial juggernaut Newstalk ZB on 648,900, then top music stations The Breeze, More, The Edge and ZM.
RNZ National was number one in 2020 during the pandemic and as recently as two years ago was on 633,700 listeners.
Other than RNZ National‘s long slow slide (it was 5th earlier this year) there were few surprises in this round of ratings: NZME’s Newstalk ZB stayed number one in audience and in market share for the umpteenth time and MediaWorks’ music stations took the next three places.
What might have been the star turn, however, was the MediaWorks hip hop station Mai FM.
In the nationwide figures, it rose 25,000 listeners a week to 460,600 and to lie right behind RNZ National. Its lift between surveys was twice that of ZB, or The Edge, and came as The Breeze and More FM fell.
Mai‘s remarkable performance came in the Auckland market.
It cemented its second place to Newstalk ZB, increasing its audience by 14,700 to 239,900 while the talk channel fell 12,000 to 265,700. That is now within possible striking distance. Mai was also well clear of third-placed The Breeze (217,000).
But it was in the commercially lucrative Auckland breakfast slot that Mai stood out, no doubt boosted by the return of star DJ Nickson Clark, a Mai ‘OG’ who had transferred to The Edge in 2022, with some backlash from his own fans.
Mai was up 2.2 share points to 11.9 and 14,800 listeners to 141,500, and not only closed the gap with clear market leader Mike Hosking (20.9 share, down 0.6; 178,000 audience, down 12,500) but cleared out from all its music challengers in the city.
Mai‘s 141,500 listeners compares with 95,800 for The Breeze in third place, 84,100 for The Edge in fourth and 78,600 for More FM in fifth.
Mai is second to Newstalk in Auckland in five of the six time slots through the day (nudged into third by The Breeze between noon and 4pm). At the weekend it closes the audience gap with Newstalk to just 4000 listeners, down from a gap of 18,000 last survey.
In Auckland Mai is the number one station for listeners in all the younger age brackets, 10-24, 18-39, 25-44 and 25-54.
Its surge hardly went unnoticed in MediaWorks HQ.
“Mai FM has knocked it out of the park, jumping to the number one music station in Auckland with a massive 10.1 share and a cumulative audience of almost 240,000,” content director Leon Wratt told staff.
“The Mai morning crew with their new line up of Tegan, Fame and Nickson are the #1 music breakfast show in Tāmaki Makaurau with 11.9 share. They are a phenomenal  5.3 points ahead in share of the next best music station, The Breeze.“
Mai‘s standout survey result brought back memories of its most famous day, in 2002, when in Auckland it knocked Newstalk ZB from the top spot. It surged then to an 11.7 share to the former champion’s 11.2, ending a decade of dominance.
Mai had begun in 1992, promoting Māori language and culture and mainly broadcasting hip hop and R&B. MediaWorks bought the indebted station in 2008 and later networked it around New Zealand centres. The frequency in Auckland is owned by iwi, who lease it to MediaWorks, but the deal meant the business was spared forking out millions to buy a frequency in the city.
Mai‘s success has more than repaid the original investment. It had another rich patch of ratings around five years ago, until, sitting like it is now in clear second and way out in front for music listeners in the city, it had a sudden drop from an 11.2 share to just 7.0 between surveys and fell out of bed in key demographics (eg, down 10 share points to 11.9 for those aged 18 to 24). NZME’s younger demo network ZM was the beneficiary that time.
RNZ’s radio results were chastening, but its chief executive Paul Thompson is focusing on its broader online, on-demand and podcast audience which he says sees RNZ content consumed by 77 percent of New Zealanders over 18 each month.
The rnz.co.nz site has been growing over the past two years and surged again to 1.4m unique users in July, to be third to Stuff.co.nz on 2.1m and nzherald.co.nz on just on 2 million. TVNZ is fourth, with RNZ and TVNZ benefiting from the end of the Newshub website, which had been over the million mark and growing.
The company said: “Rnz.co.nz has been a major contributor to [audience] growth. Visitors to the website have risen more than 60 percent to a record 1.4m in July.”
RNZ measures its overall audience through its regular Value Indices Survey which showed 51 percent access RNZ content on multiple platforms, and just 2 percent solely through broadcast radio.
Thompson said the decline in its radio listenership had pre-dated Covid. (Newstalk ZB has also drifted off from its Covid-era highs, which once reached 744,000).
“While live radio numbers obviously only reflect a portion of our total audience, it is an area that we want do better in, and we will be looking at ways we can improve. We are introducing a new line-up for Saturday Morning this weekend and will look to see what other changes could be beneficial.”
Two men who’ve spent their careers competing with public broadcasters and sometimes criticising them will now play a role in shaping their future.
Minister for Media and Communications Paul Goldsmith has appointed former Mediaworks CEO, Brent Impey, and former SKY TV boss, John Fellet, to the boards of RNZ and TVNZ respectively.
Goldsmith is clearly looking to add some industry knowledge and hard-nosed commercial experience to the boards.
They are good choices because both have a passion for the media industry that almost outweighs their focus on the bottom line of the P & L statement. Almost.
While Impey headed a radio and TV network, his great love was radio.  He listened hard to his company’s stations and their competitors.  While he was an executive, he also did some hosting on the talk stations to learn more about the nuances of the medium.
After 10 years as a director and then chair of New Zealand Rugby, Impey well understands the difference between management and governance but he is bound to have some searching questions for RNZ chief executive Paul Thompson on the steadily declining ratings on RNZ National. 
Impey will have views on why some hosts and shows are losing audience and what’s being done to turn that around.  He will want to know what new talent is being fostered and what new formats are being considered.
Fellet’s great expertise is calculating the price of inputs – especially programming.  He had a reputation in the industry for never coming out on the wrong side of a deal.  Fellet will want to put a magnifying glass on TVNZ’s current deals and what its programme buyers have been up to.  At Sky, he hated paying a cent more than he had to. 
If TVNZ really is planning to enter the pay TV or subscription game, then Fellet is the sort of director you want. His expertise will be invaluable.
Both Impey and Fellet look like they will be ‘lone wolves’ on the Willie Jackson-appointed boards of the public broadcasters but that won’t worry them. 
Goldsmith added two other new members to the RNZ board: Gracie MacKinlay, a former chief executive of e-commerce firm Mighty Ape, and Mads Moller, a tech startup executive. It’s also likely that Goldsmith will look to provide further colleagues for Impey and Fellet as the terms of  other RNZ and TVNZ directors expire.
Awareness within TVNZ that contracts for the morning Breakfast show expire in December this year has spurred some talk that the accountants’ axe could be hovering.
The appearance of a job ad for a foreign producer, with the fact that it was a fixed-term contract until December written in bold type, would have done nothing to ease those murmurings.
But TVNZ tells MediaRoom nothing is afoot.
“That speculation is incorrect,” a spokesperson said. “While TVNZ is working hard to reduce its cost base, there are no plans to cancel Breakfast. Breakfast continues to be a strong revenue and audience performer for TVNZ.”
After the sudden cuts this year to successful news and current affairs shows Fair Go and Sunday, with dozens of roles disestablished, it seems the cost focus continues to have some staffers nervous.