Source : THE AGE NEWS
When Skyhooks’ You Just Like Me ‘Cos I’m Good in Bed went to air at 11am on Sunday, January 19, 1975, it was the first time the song was played on radio in Australia. The song that followed, The Rolling Stones’ Sympathy for the Devil, released six years earlier in 1969, had never had airtime either.
Being good in bed or taking a sympathetic view of the devil were not subjects that had been welcome on Australian radio.
Triple J turns 50: (left to right) Missy Higgins, Doja Cat, Wil Anderson, Bernard FanningCredit: Marija Ercegovac
The first two songs played on Australia’s new public youth radio network, then named Double Jay, injected fresh DNA into Australian cultural life.
They were “regarded as something that you would never play”, Marius Webb, the station’s first-ever manager tells The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age. “So that’s the atmosphere that the station was born in.” When it moved from AM to FM, the station was renamed Triple J.
It’s irreverent, youth-led start laid the foundations for the station’s growth, but as it turns 50 this Sunday, the concept of a youth radio station has become something of an oxymoron.
Streaming is the primary method of consuming music now, particularly for Triple J’s young demographic. Eight in 10 Gen Z Australians hold a music subscription service, according to Deloitte, while seven in 10 Millennials do.
The numbers speak to Triple J’s existential problem: young people don’t listen to radio. The station’s ratings have been in freefall for some time.
In the final survey of 2024, its share of total audience in the 18-24 demographic (its target audience) was dire. In Sydney, it sat at 2.9 per cent and at 3.6 per cent in Melbourne. It fared better in the less crowded markets of Brisbane (11), Adelaide (7.8) and Perth (9.8).
In the radio sphere, niche offerings in Australia’s two largest cities, such as FBi Radio in Sydney and Triple R in Melbourne, have squeezed audiences, which have also defected to commercial networks. In Perth, Mix and Nova shared more than 50 per cent of the 18-24 demographic alone. It was a similar story in Sydney with Triple J outgunned by KIIS, Nova and SmoothFM in the December survey.
Wil Anderson, former Triple J breakfast host, questions the use of ratings to judge the success of a station with a mandate to provide something different for Australian’s youth. The ABC should not make any decisions with ratings in mind, he says.
Wil Anderson and his co-presenter Adam Spencer during their Triple J days. It has been fertile ground for the ABC to foster its own talent.Credit: Fairfax
“Ratings were literally invented for advertisers, […] so then why are you using that methodology?” he says. “Maybe they’re not, maybe that’s external noise. But then they have to be stronger in saying, well, we don’t measure our value like this. We don’t measure value based on how many people listen. We measure our value on what needs we’re serving in the broad community.”
Measuring Triple J’s success through a radio lens ignores the larger presence it has built online, says Mardi Caught, former executive at major labels Warner, EMI and Sony, who now runs marketing strategy firm The Annex, advising talent and labels.
“We’ve got this brand that sits in those [digital] platforms, is speaking to youth and is still really relevant to them, but we’re still judging them by the traditional means,” Caught says.
Triple J can reach a much bigger audience online, leveraging a lot of the same content it produces for radio. On YouTube, it has 1.8 million subscribers, 295,000 on TikTok and almost a million followers on Instagram.
Success on TikTok is judged on viral moments rather than subscribers and Triple J had a big win the week before the Hottest 100 countdown last year. It published a video of Australian duo Royel Otis covering the 2001 Sophie Ellis-Bextor song Murder on the Dancefloor, the same month the song featured in the film Saltburn.
A clip shared on the band’s TikTok clocked up 14 million views, and millions more on the Triple J page. It was clipped, reclipped and shared countless more times, while the full version has 7.3 million views on Triple J’s YouTube page.
Globally, “everyone knows Triple J”, lead singer of British indie rock band Glass Animals, Dave Bayley says. Passionate listeners, the yearly Hottest 100 count, and the reputation of Like a Version make for a brand with global music impact, he says.
His band’s 2020 hit Heat Waves topped the Hottest 100 that year. “It obviously pushed the song into the charts in Australia, eventually getting to No.1, which started the ball rolling for it to work its way into the charts around the world. Where it climbed to No. 1 all over,” Bayley tells this masthead. That’s quite an impact.”
Dave Bayley of Glass Animals says Triple J helped take their hit ‘Heat Waves’ to No.1 globally.Credit: Tim Mosenfelder
But bad headlines have plagued the station’s reputation with its core listeners, too, such as a major clear out of its top executives at the end of 2023. Head of music Meghan Loader, station manager Laura McAuliffe and content director Tia Newling all left, but their departures were overshadowed by the unceremonious dumping of Richard Kingsmill, longtime group music director and host of The Funhouse on sister station Double J.
Kingsmill had a big hand in introducing and championing local acts like Powderfinger and Grinspoon, also playing a part in establishing Triple J Unearthed, helping discover artists Missy Higgins, Flume, Vance Joy, and more.
The Triple JJJ mix of local artists and unknown international acts was crucial in the pre-streaming era. To this day people thank Anderson for introducing them to The Pixies, he says.
Triple J has been as a force in breaking artists and helping them maintain successful careers, says Tim Kelly, former label marketing executive. Triple J has a mandate to play 40 per cent of its songs by Australians, but it has also “super promoted” local acts, he says, giving them extra airtime.
But the days of local acts living out successful careers solely within Australia are largely gone. Kelly recently published a paper on the impact of streaming on Australia’s music industry. His research shows Australian and New Zealand acts in the ARIA singles chart are in steady decline, sitting at just 2.5 per cent in 2023.
Phil Jamieson and Grinspoon – a Triple J favourite.
And as Triple J contends with fewer people listening, its musical selections have become broader and more pop-based, he says.
Some view Billie Eilish’s Bad Guy topping the 2018 Hottest 100 count as the moment Triple J accepted the mainstream.
The arrival of TikTok may have accelerated this trend. Its impact as a globally homogenising tastemaker cannot be understated, says Caught. The app took off in 2020 during COVID when most young Australians were stuck inside and on their phones, and voted W.A.P by Megan Thee Stallion and Cardi B into No. 6 in the Hottest 100.
When Doja Cat’s Paint the Town Red won last year, critics argued the shift was undeniable.
In 2021, representation of Australian artists in the Hottest 100 fell to 55 per cent, after five years at 65 per cent. The rise in American representation mirrors a growth of listening in the charts, which now include streaming data.
Triple J Watchdog, a site analysing the music played on the station, shows it has played almost double the amount of American artists (2016) compared with Australian acts (1112) over the past year.
Caught says young people don’t take what is commercial or not into consideration when they choose what music they listen to.
Anderson says if they have found or are being served an artist elsewhere, it is “dumb” to think Triple J has to play it.
“The measurement should be, is there a gap that it fills? Because the minute its doing something that you can easily find somewhere else, that’s when you have to have a conversation about whether it is fulfilling the charter,” Anderson says.
“When we’re making our television shows for the ABC, the first thing I always say is, could this show be made on a commercial network? Because if it could be, we shouldn’t be making it at the ABC.”
No other country in the world has anything like Triple J, all interviewees were keen to point out, arguing that a broadcaster unchained to commercial demands, with a focus on delivering local music to a younger audience, should be left untouched.
There is “still a place for a radio station that reflects Australian youth culture, 100 per cent and particularly for Australian youth culture that isn’t being served by commercial media”, Anderson says.
But at what point do the returns no longer justify the output?
Fifty years on, Webb says the outlook is really, really difficult. “If I was tasked with the same thing today, I’d be saying, well, get out of radio. Take away those transmitters and just think of it completely anew. Start with podcasts, with streaming because the kids and the new audiences aren’t like the traditional ones.”
Caught disagrees, saying Triple J will always need to broadcast to maintain relevance and to serve the generation that grew up with it. But, she adds, it is really starting to shine away from broadcast platforms.
Whether it’s Triple J legend Richard Kingsmill or an algorithm developed in the Silicon Valley, somebody is always curating your taste, says Anderson. “I kind of like the idea that it’s a person or group of people, rather than just a computer.”
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