Southern Cross Austereo Chairman, post-ratings slide: “we’ll discuss management”

The Chairman of Southern Cross Media, Max Moore-Wilton, has defended the decision of the Southern Cross Media board to not re-sign Kyle & Jackie O last year, and has foreshadowed discussions about SCA management in the next board meeting.

Speaking about the decision, Moore-Wilton said: “They were the circumstances at the time, I don’t look back, there’s no point. We’ve got to look forward and convince the market we have top-rating programs. Listeners have obviously chosen the show they prefer, it’s probably a somewhat higher order than what we expected. It’s very difficult when the number one-rating radio show moves.”

The new 2Day Breakfast show was expected to decline in share, although the extent of the impact was extreme, with Head of Content Craig Bruce telling Radio Today that the ratings result was “worse than expected”.

In comments hardly likely to be reassuring to the Southern Cross Austereo team, Moore-Wilton foreshadowed discussions about management following the ratings performance.

“We have a board meeting coming up shortly and we will have discussions about the management in the board meeting.

“We will make some judgments but these things have to be done on the basis of evidence and facts. It’s quite early to be speculating about what we’re going to do.”

For 2Day, whilst the ratings performance in survey one may be ’ground zero’, if they have a poor wave out of the back end of the survey then it is possible that there may be further declines before the station can turn around.